


Living Legacy: Redux

by doodlebug_nimbus



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguity, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Character Study, Drama, Dreams and Nightmares, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Family Secrets, Female Cloud Strife, Fix-It of Sorts, Flashbacks, Gen, Heavy Angst, Human Experimentation, Long, Memories, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Planet Scar Syndrome | Geostigma, Post-Canon, References to Depression, Rewrite, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Tags May Change, Tension, Vaguely Sapphic Undertones, j-cells are an untapped angst market and i am here to exploit it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24475141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doodlebug_nimbus/pseuds/doodlebug_nimbus
Summary: It's been ten long years. Midgar has been built up again, AVALANCHE has disbanded, and Shinra is back with a vengeance. While nowhere near as powerful as it once was, the reformed corporation's new plans to rule don't threaten the planet—they threaten the space-time continuum as everyone knows it. And without anyone to stop it, it seems as though that the universe's eventual plunge into darkness is inevitable.But what could Shinra possibly need Cloud for?
Relationships: Claudia Strife & Cloud Strife, Cloud Strife & Cloud Strife's Mother, Elmyra Gainsborough & Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart & Cloud Strife
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	1. Degradation

**Author's Note:**

> alright boys let's GOOO  
> the original was an unfinished embarrassing mess and now that i actually know what i'm doing this time, not only am i going to finish this, but this will be better than the nonsense i was spewing previously.  
> not all tags will come into play immediately, hence the slow build tag (and the first batch of chapters will be slower paced, around chapter 5 or 6 things will starts to pick up). this fic is basically my own take on ac, and as that last tag indicates, there will be plenty of j-cell trickery here...  
> the first few chapters will be a little short, but i promise the later ones will be...meaty...  
> i will update weekly, usually on monday or tuesday.
> 
> ANYWAY, enjoy

It sounded awful, but Cloud was tired of helping people.

Every day she had to deal with the same type of nonsense, completing mindless tasks that could and should be done easily by adults, yet every person she had to assist was somehow incapable of doing them themselves. A lot of them, she had discovered a while ago, were also the ones that made her delivery service that much more painful, constantly messing up their addresses or what they asked for, even sometimes messing up their names.

 _Absolutely baffling how stupid humans are_ , she often found herself thinking. _To think that they’re supposed to be advanced lifeforms…_

She never caught herself considering everyone else separate from her. She always struggled with that, even when she first returned to Midgar. And despite Tifa’s constant reassurances that she was just like everyone else—gods bless her soul—Cloud felt it deep within herself that what she says was simply not true. She was something else. Her black, retractable claws and her fangs made sure of that. There was also the fact that as of recently, her eyes had assumed the likeness of his own, but she didn’t like thinking about the implications.

She also didn’t like the fact that only he could possibly understand how she felt.

One second he was her reflection, and the next second there were shards of mirror glass piercing her knuckles. She didn’t even register them until they fell out of their cuts and clattered against the vinyl floor. The pain wasn’t burning sharp like it used to be whenever she cut herself as a child. It was dull, more like the constant sore ache spread all over her body, perhaps a tad more painful. Hardly any blood, too. She watched the cuts vanish under new flesh fusing them shut, then grunted and looked away, into the only window in her “bedroom”. She hated regeneration, she hated seeing it in action. It only cemented her inhumanity and reminded her of why she chose to live alone in the first place.

Flashes of Tifa’s fearful face flickered in her mind before she morphed into Aerith, the fear never disappearing, staring her down as her arms felt heavy and she raised her sword high above her head to kill—

She moved away from the window, toward her closet. That same ratty black outfit she had worn since forever was waiting for her. She struggled to remember when she got it, or if she even got it all—

No, it was ten years ago. She forgot where or why, but that wasn’t relevant information anymore. As she slipped into it, chills wormed their way down her spine. She was thinking about him being her reflection, even though she had told herself to actively ignore it, even though thinking about it was likely going to further ruin everything.

 _It doesn’t mean anything_ , Cloud thought, though a twist in her gut suggested otherwise. She ignored that, too. _It’s probably just a side effect of the J-cells finally reaching my brain._

She couldn’t help but laugh. That might've been worse. And at this rate, if the cells kept on multiplying and dividing, there might come a point in the future where her former friends were obliged to kill her. She would end up the next Calamity, hideously transformed into Jenova’s image, rendered a mindless monstrosity hellbent on destruction.

Before she shuffled out for another painful round of deliveries, a strange smile rose up on her face. Somehow, that sounded like a better existence, one where she was incapable of complex thought. Just another monster to kill. The wonderful release of death…

“You know, when I first saw you, I thought you were a guy.”

She didn’t bother to look at him. She set his packages on his doorstep, and was about to turn around when he grabbed her shoulder. She immediately tensed up.

“You…you’re not…you’re not one of those girls, are you? The ones with short hair and a hatred of men?”

Even though she wore sunglasses, she still shot him a glare and brushed him off. “The hell are you talking about?”

He blinked, his fat stupid face looking more punchable by the minute. He looked to his left and right before saying, “Never mind.”

He smiled, and it took all of her remaining willpower to not just reach in and pull him apart. But she didn’t give in and left for Fenrir, started her up, and departed without saying another word. It was better that way, to ignore people instead of humoring their stupidity.

His only redeeming quality was that he wasn’t too far away from the highway, and sure enough, Fenrir’s wheels were soon rolling along smoothened asphalt instead of gravelly, uneven pavement.

As she sped along the highway without a particular thought as to where she was headed, she sensed the Shinra logo, freshened up with a new coat of red paint, leering at her. Thinking about them to any capacity was unproductive at best and enraging at worst, so to keep herself distracted she just gripped Fenrir’s handles harder and crushed the gas pedal.

There was nothing that wrenched her heart more than seeing Shinra crawling back to Midgar as the years stretched on. Seeing people flood its reworked headquarters in search of order and stability, seeing how the city skyline slowly degraded into its original brooding greyness, seeing everything they had fought for so ruthlessly be reduced to nothing once more…

Like nothing mattered. Like they never existed at all.

The fighting between each other. The disagreements on what should be done to get rid of the new Shinra. The hopelessness, the uselessness, the utmost despair…

AVALANCHE couldn’t keep itself together and broke down. In hindsight, she should’ve realized that such a hastily grouped mess of wildly different individuals would never last. In fact, she always suspected that her general apathy toward everyone they met after Midgar was mutual. For a select few members it was aversion—Yuffie, Cait Sith, and Cid.

Cid and his filthy mouth were so obnoxious all the time, it was like swearing was his only personality trait. Besides smoking. She wasn’t sure which aspect was worse. Sometimes she couldn’t take it anymore and told him off unless he learned how to mask that rotten stench of wasted cigarette butts. Other times she just walked off and hid until he was gone from the scene, and even then, there was always that lingering whiff of burnt death…And if it wasn’t the smoking it was his swearing. Whenever he went off on a tangent the others would become visibly uncomfortable, and she always wondered if anyone actually listened to him during those moments. Without his swearing he was nothing to note. Not particularly useful, not emotionally intelligent, barely any hobbies or interests besides the dirtiest ones. Not even funny, though he thought he was hilarious.

Cait Sith—or more truthfully, Reeve—was marginally more tolerable. Mostly due to the fact that he chose to hide behind that awful cat-robot so she never had to see his aggravating face. Otherwise, his constant quips and shrieky voice were enough for her to shut him out of her mind. She only laughed whenever someone throttled or kicked his puppet.

Yuffie was someone she refused to be around—she’d rely on a Turk faster than her. At least whatever Turk she’d get stuck with wouldn’t constantly loot her, they knew better than that to do it to her. Perhaps that was why Cloud never wanted Yuffie to be a part of the group; she only valued people in how much they had with them.

Though her aversion didn’t explain the malaise she felt with everyone, even with Tifa and Aerith. When Sephiroth was still around she blamed it on either too much mako in her or the J-cells, but something deep within her told her that neither were true.

AVALANCHE…she hated AVALANCHE. That was the truth. She hated everything, after all. She hated herself, she hated the people around her, she hated the planet and all else that was on it. She’d destroy the planet if she could.

Fenrir slowed down as she started to laugh. She squeezed the handles so hard a distant part of herself worried they’d burst. That didn’t matter, though, did it? Nothing mattered. It wouldn’t matter if the planet died. It wouldn’t matter if she was the one who killed it. It wouldn’t matter if everyone died off with it.

Her laugh morphed into something more twisted, more inhuman. Less like her and more like him. She didn’t notice it, of course, just kept cackling like a madwoman and relishing in her increasingly maddening fantasies of destruction.

Such sweet revenge for what the planet had done to her… 

Perhaps Sephiroth was right, in a way. She was nothing more than an empty puppet.

But that didn’t matter, either.

Nothing would matter when she’d finally summon Meteor— 

She halted Fenrir, frowning, scared at herself.

Midgar was quiet, slow, a sleeping giant curled around her. The bleary atmosphere felt more oppressive than it did before. She stepped away from her ride and studied the restored sectors festering below her, then observed her hands like they were someone else’s. That itchy, writhing sensation, as if her insides were infested, crawling with countless swarms of bugs, seared her viscera, indicating that her J-cells were agitated again. Her heart pounded in her ears as her rib cage closed in on her lungs.

Her J-cells were typically sent into a frenzy _only_ if Sephiroth or Jenova tried to manipulate her in some shape or form.

Why were they acting up now? 


	2. Restoration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LIED  
> i just wanted to fluff up this fic a bit before i fuck off until the next week, so here.  
> enjoy

_It couldn’t hurt to pay them a visit…_

The new Shinra Headquarters were laughable, pathetic. As much as Rufus tried to restore his father’s empire back to its former glory, he simply couldn’t. Through a combination of lack of resources and sheer ignorance, the most he managed was the revival of electricity throughout the building. Everything else was, in the face of his cheap patch-ups, still heavily damaged. So much rubble and other garbage littered every surface in the lobby, she couldn’t imagine what the remaining floors looked like.

_Maybe he’s budgeted most of his money for the city? It’s still sparsely populated but it’s beginning to look familiar…_

Cloud hesitated before climbing the stairs. Even if he couldn’t afford a lot of things, he still might’ve reserved some funding for security.

Then she looked at the woman sleeping at the front desk. Smirking, she continued her ascent until she could see the side elevators in the corners of her eyes, and moved toward one of them. The little black bar above the elevator’s chamber was lit up with a red arrow pointing downward, so hopefully it still worked. 

When it finally manifested, sliding open its doors, she sucked in a breath and stepped inside. She stifled a laugh at the reworked keypad for accessible floors (the numerous gaping holes left in it the remains of the torn-out buttons), then noticed the numbers with a “B” in front of them.

_What’s this? Did he decide to build down instead of up?_

Curious, she reached for the button that read, “B30”.

The next few minutes were nothing short of terrifying. After the doors closed down faster than they opened, the lights inside the elevator began to flicker and fizzle, while the shaft itself started to shake. Distant, overhead gears could be heard grinding and creaking, more audible than they should have been. The shaft dropped. It didn’t descend.

She didn’t have a second to process what was happening, and her destination was already waiting for her right around the time her stomach started to churn from vertigo. The darkness lurking right beyond the elevator’s dingy lights prevented her from progressing.

Until she heard faint, frantic whispering. Even with enhanced hearing she couldn’t make out what was being said, though she suspected the speaker was male. Amidst the whispering were mechanical whirrs and watery bubbling, reminiscent of what she remembered from being in a—of what she remembered from being around tanks.

Without anything else to go by, she approached the whispering. The vaguest sign of trouble, she knew she was fast enough to slip away. The closer she drew toward his voice the more she could make out, and the more she could pick up on his other noises.

“We’ll make everything better…You won’t always…”

“Forgive me for what I’ve done to you…You understand, right?”

His words were often interspersed with panicked gasping, and the occasional creak of some light metal. He sounded as if he was pleading mercy from his higher up, and she began to wonder if she should’ve even wandered down here at all.

The darkness had also begun to peel back to reveal definite forms, the most striking being a long cylindrical shape in the center of the floor. She could vaguely make out tubes and wiring spurting from the complicated machinery on the bottom and top of the cylinder. But what scared her most was the figure suspended within the cylinder itself.

Shrouded by blackness, only the radiant, sky blue bottom of the tank highlighted its form—its ghastly, ghastly form. It was so mangled and relatively featureless that she couldn’t even make out what it was supposed to be, besides it being a blob. Its bluish grey flesh was pitted with various holes and strangely thick veins, and ropes of red flesh, emerging from some of the larger holes, curled in and out of its shape. At the top the blob thinned off into the worst approximation of a head she had ever seen.

Leaning on one “shoulder” thanks to melted flesh melding the right side of its face to where its collarbones should’ve been, the head itself was malformed, the skull having caved in and its face not even close to human, more like a stiff mask of skin with punctures in place of its nose, eyes, and mouth. Some freak had shoved a human eye into one of the eye punctures, rather badly at that, so that it floated away from its “socket”, never being able to escape thanks to its muscles and veins being forcibly buried into the puncture. While she didn’t like to make the comparison, the monstrosity reminded her of an incomplete Jenova.

Then she spotted the man seated next to the tank.

She screamed, leaping back, readying to bolt when he started to drift toward her, one of his arms outstretched as if he wanted to stroke her face, the other arm turning the wheels of his wheelchair. The left half of his face had rotted off, thanks to a hideous purplish-black slime that writhed and throbbed and consumed his face’s tissues until it had whittled to his bone. Globs of the slime dribbled down his chin and dripped onto his bright white suit, still pulsating as though it were living, breathing, _alive_. Whenever significant chunks of the slime came off, revealing his off-white skeleton, the slime would warp to accommodate the loss of mass.

His platinum blonde hair, clearly once kept cut and tame, had sprouted wildly from the right side of his head into long, gnarled strands of silver, matted together by the crust of aged blood, while patches of scarred baldness stretching across his scalp suggested he often tore his hair out. A horrible smile was plastered on his ashen face, and the glow from the tank brought attention to the bandages hiding one of his eyes.

His one iris was the same as the iris of the thing’s eye.

“Oh, more of her own!” he said in a singsong voice, the notes tinged with the ring of encroaching madness. “I didn’t know Mother had more children!”

“Wha—what the hell are you talking about?” Cloud stumbled back, then spun around and sped toward the elevator, only to freeze at the sight of the doors being closed. They were open when she first came down.

“Don’t deny it. You feel her, too—she wants to be with you, she wants to be with all of us,” he continued, his words becoming more slurred the more excited he became. Cloud banged on the doors, not caring if her actions were illogical, she just needed to get away from _him_. “She is the one who will save us! She is the one who will save the pl—”

A sudden fit of some sort strangled his sentence, and as he twitched almost helplessly, foaming at the mouth while his eye rolled into the back of his head, the lights from the elevator flooded from behind Cloud, and at last she could identify him, though she regretted being able to.

The sad, pathetic shadow of Rufus Shinra jerking in his wheelchair was the last thing she saw before the elevator doors closed her out.


	3. All You Are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay new chapter  
> hopefully you'll enjoy

Geostigma.

They called it geostigma.

No one knew where it came from, and no one knew how it spread. They said that the first victim was a young woman from long ago. They said it was a sickness that used to plague the Ancients. They said it was the planet’s way of punishing humanity. They said, they said…It was all rumors—pointless rumors—to Cloud.

The effects weren’t immediate, as was the case with all the worst diseases. Rather, it was a decline of the body over a nine-month period, starting physically and ending mentally. Considering how recently it had appeared, there weren’t too many examples of “complete” geostigma, though word from Midgar inhabitants was that Rufus’ geostigma was nearly finished running its course.

Then again, the timeline for geostigma’s first appearance was murky at best and false at worst. The uncertainty of the disease, Cloud believed, was what scared people the most.

_The public doesn’t know its full destructive capabilities_ , she thought to herself. Her wording stopped her mind. _Why did I say it like that? I don’t know any better, really…_

She glanced down at Fenrir, listening to her engine purr. As aimless as she normally was when the deliveries for the day were done, she kicked her to life, and ran down the highway without an idea of where she was going.

_Hard to believe that he’s still the President of Shinra. I guess they’re desperate…_ She laughed, but the smile on her face evaporated the more she mulled over her encounter with him. _What the hell was that thing in the tank? Who was Mother? Why did he seem to want me?_

_Are they…They’re not trying to create another Jenova, are they? Oh, why am I pretending that they’re not? Of course they are, but for what purpose? They don’t really have SOLDIERS anymore so they can’t enhance them with her cells. They don’t have the resources and people necessary for another Sephiroth, either, I suspect._

_…I really haven’t got a clue as to what they’re trying to accomplish. Regardless of what they are doing, it doesn’t look like they’re going to be successful, assuming that thing in the tank was their attempt at her…_

_It must’ve been her, in some form. He was referring to someone, something as Mother, and that blob had to be her. I just know it. Sephiroth behaved the exact same way, referring to crimes against nature as his mother. I suppose that was fitting, considering the monstrosity he turned into right before he became that winged-angel thing…_

She remembered the smell and gagged. It was overwhelming, consuming, enough to smother someone. She didn’t know what was causing it—it could’ve been anything from the gaping pores in his dead-grey skin oozing sticky, pus-like gunk at alarming rates, to the mucus that seeped from hidden glands in his countless purplish tail tentacles and the loops of intestines spilling out from a tear in his bloated, veiny stomach, to the viscous black fluid that spilled from his mouths whenever he opened them—but it didn’t matter, his DNA finally worked against him and robbed him of any trace of conscious thought he might’ve possessed.

He was already far gone by that point, though after his metamorphosis it seemed like he was nothing more than a wild animal. There was no indication of tact or planning in his attacks, just violent swinging or thrashing with all of his limbs as he screamed or growled or drooled—essentially throwing a monstrous tantrum. Strangely, the screams were sometimes strained with hurt, leaving Cloud to wonder if existing in that state was excruciating. Not that she pitied him or anything, he didn’t deserve such sympathy. But his transformation into something so grotesque and so inhuman, and so rapidly as well, triggered a primal fear within her that haunted her for years afterward.

Mostly due to her being unable to resist focusing on the fact that his J-cells were responsible for such a hideous act. It made her wonder if she ran a risk of turning into something like that, since she knew that Hojo had injected her with unusually high amounts of Jenova’s DNA so she could rival Sephiroth in power. And while everyone knew that he just destroyed her brain instead, she pondered whether or not the others made the connections she did.

If she ended up like him, what if her mind was still left intact, somehow? What if she was somewhat self-aware without control of her body? Like all the other times Sephiroth (or Jenova?) forced his will on her? Being forced to watch herself tear Tifa apart, pulling her at her seams like she was a doll, unable to listen to her cries for help amongst her shrieks of agony, her J-cells relishing at the blood splattering everywhere—and the same being done to Barret, Marlene, all because he— 

She didn’t dwell on it any further. Her chest was hurting, that writhing sensation from before had flared up again and now it was inducing waves of dizzying nausea. Bile began to rise in her throat, and no matter how many times she tried to push it down it returned even worse. She brought Fenrir to a stop to recollect herself…hopefully.

As she stepped away from her, she staggered, Midgar spinning around her as though she were on the world’s worst amusement ride. Her vision clouded before she nearly fell over the guardrailing. If her reflexes weren’t inhumanly sharp, she would’ve joined Aerith in a short while.

_Aerith…_ She started thinking about her, steadying herself on the guardrailing. She didn’t notice she was leaning over it. _Is she still out there somewhere? I haven’t heard her in a while. I hope she’s alright…_

Every week Cloud made it a point to visit the old church. The decade hadn’t been kind to it, with two walls missing more than half of themselves, massive holes in the floor filled with all sorts of nasty pests, and invasive vegetation greedily spreading their roots in every last crevice, but her flowers were as golden as ever. It was there in the flowerbed Aerith spoke to her. Cloud didn’t necessarily understand how she did it, only assuming that her Cetran blood aided her in some capacity.

And against Aerith’s confirmation that she had forgiven her, Cloud still refused to accept what happened at the Forgotten City. If only she was stronger then, if only her mind wasn’t a chaotic disorganized mess of hurt and confusion, if only she wasn’t a vessel for Sephiroth—

A white hot knife pierced her brain, and at that, she gasped before she gave in to her nausea, hunching over, regurgitating something warm and thick. There was too much of it, so by the time she managed to stop herself she was panting. Sweat beaded on her brow, her stomach ached, and it was next to impossible to concentrate on anything. In the corners of her eyes it looked as if she had vomited ink.

Unfortunately, Cloud was not one to expend her thoughts on any problems she might’ve been going through, so instead of worrying about what just happened, she stumbled back to Fenrir, ignoring the vertigo threatening to make her collapse. For a few moments she stilled, holding her head, her newly formed headache eating at her brain.

After finally getting an idea of where she could’ve gone, Fenrir roared to life once more and she sped off to her destination.

She had forgotten that her eyes were no longer normal.

“Cloud, what’s happened to your eyes?” Elmyra’s terrified gaze only made her feel worse. “Is…Is everything all right?”

How badly she wanted to tell her about everything that was destroying her now…But she didn’t want her to be even more upset. “I’m fine.”

“You’re awfully pale, too…It’s okay to tell me if something’s wrong, you know,” she said, opening the door more as if to invite her indoors. “Come in. I don’t feel comfortable making you stand outside like this.”

She almost tripped as she followed her into her home. Her face flushed with panic when Elmyra caught her, and she sensed the latter’s fearful gaze intensify.

“This isn’t like you! What’s wrong?”

Her J-cells squirmed a little. They were probably responsible. Probably. Considering how messed up she was.

“I…don’t know.”

Elmyra was quiet in thought, with her head turned toward the stairwell near the kitchen. Then she glanced back at her.

“Do you want to rest upstairs?”

Cloud didn’t have a reason to object; after all, she only wanted what had been taken from her. Proper sleep. 

It was a bit odd, admittedly, to be in the guest room’s bed, though the window to consider the situation had long passed. In the minute Cloud laid her head on the pillows, the exhaustion of a dozen restless months suddenly sacked her and cast her body in lead.

Elmyra was nearby, meticulously readjusting a shelf near the foot of her bed, which was full of framed photos. Every photo was her with Aerith, sending another pang of guilt through Cloud's heart.

“If you want to stay a night or two, I don't mind. Your…work is going to be put on hold, I hope? I mean, considering your health and all…”

“I don't think I'll be doing any more deliveries any time soon,” Cloud mumbled, pulling the sheets closer to her body in response to a seemingly random onset of shivers. “I think…I just want to be left alone for a while.”

“Oh—should I le—”

“No, no. You’re fine. It’s everyone else I can’t be bothered by.” She lolled her head, moving her eyes from the shelf to the window next to it, a small circle with a painting above it. The figure in the painting was draped in black, hooded, and their only discernible feature was their long, white hair hanging out of the hood’s hole. “Did you paint that?”

Elmyra stopped dusting off a photo of a young Aerith holding a bunch of Jacob’s ladders, and looked at her over her shoulder, confused. “No? I thought I told you about that one already…”

“I forgot.”

“You certainly remember me telling you how I knew Tifa’s mother, right?” She only started speaking again once Cloud nodded, setting the photo on the shelf and coming closer to her. While she pulled a chair from the desk in the middle of the room, she added, “Before she was pregnant with her, she loved to paint. I’d say she was quite good at it! I have a lot of her other works in the attic, I should bring them out some time…But anyway, she was obsessed with this one subject—that hooded figure with the white hair. Of course she painted other things, like landscapes and self-portraits and whatnot, though she always went back to the person in the hood.

“Her husband asked her about this person all the time…and she never answered him. But she told _me_ , on a night I’ll never forget…This was when she had first learned of her pregnancy, and we were in my kitchen to discuss it. Eventually the topic of her artwork came up, and she confessed that the paintings were actually a woman she had seen long ago. The only problem with her encounter was that she never learned if it was real or if it was just a hallucination. The woman was asking her about her child, telling her that someone had stolen her child. She offered to help, asking who stole them and where she thought they might have gone, but after she looked around, the woman had disappeared. She was never seen again—yet she constantly dreamed about her ever since.

“Her expression while she explained all this to me was rather…upsetting. I’d never seen her like that before, and she never had a similar expression after that night. And considering what I’ve seen and heard since then, her descent into madness after Tifa was born, her fall from Mount Nibel, the locals writing it off as an accident…” Elmyra sighed and folded her hands across her lap, taking a moment to lower her head in silence. “Does any of that sound familiar?”

“Yeah, I think so. I didn’t know about her mother…doing that, though.”

She lifted her head, remorse glinting in her worn eyes. “I believe I’ve never told you about that…In fact, I don’t think Tifa herself knows this, but her mother’s side of the family has a long history of mental illness. It’s kind of a miracle she’s sane, honestly.”

_I haven’t seen her in a while, either._ Cloud felt a frown form on her face. _I should see her and the others soon…_

“What’s the matter?” Her heart jumped into her throat. She had forgotten that someone else was with her.

“I haven’t checked on Tifa recently…”

“Can I ask why?”

Weariness was beginning to wrap itself around her mind, and with every passing second it required more to speak. “I dunno. Too many deliveries, I guess.”

As though Elmyra sensed her tiredness, she rose up from her seat and spoke for one last time. “Well, you can rest now…I’ll see you later, alright?” She only left when Cloud acknowledged her.

The last thing Cloud saw before she fell into darkness was the painting above the window.

Stirring from an unpleasant string of nauseating dreams, she attempted to sit up in her bed, only to crumple back onto her pillow after countless searing needles pricked every muscle in her body. The headache still throbbed in her brain, now behind her eyes, and her body trembled rather violently. She contemplated laying in bed all day when she looked at the painting above the window.

The woman was staring at her, though her long white hair obscured her face. She might’ve been smiling.

Once she realized that this woman had stared at her all night, she managed to sit up, unwilling to be caught under her gaze anymore. Even if she was just a painting, Cloud couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched…

She got to her feet and reached down to readjust her tank top, freezing at the sight of herself being draped in a hospital gown. Everything else was normal, so she didn't understand why she was the only “thing” out of place. Perhaps Elmyra knew something she didn’t.

She left the room, only to stop at the top of the stairs, wheezing and hunching over—to move any portion of her body was horrible, as if someone had shackled iron balls to her limbs. Nevertheless, she remained as dismissive as ever and began her descent down the stairs.

Very strange, she noted, how quiet it was. Elmyra was often rustling something up in the kitchen or flipping the pages of a book in her small den, but today Cloud heard nothing. To ensure she was safe, she first looked in the kitchen, planning to check the other places afterward.

Her mother was asleep at the table.

Cloud pulled back in alarm when she woke up and scowled at her, while her gaze pierced her soul.

“Who…who are you?” she said, half conscious. Cloud only stopped backing away to get a good look at her—she refused the possibility that any of this was real. Why didn't she recognize her? How was she alive again? “You…Get out of my house! Leave, you monster!”

At that she rose from her seat, and after Cloud blinked a broom had materialized in her right hand. Upon seeing her mother rush toward her, the end of the broom handle pointed at her, she stumbled back and tumbled out the front door. Her spine screamed coming into contact with the ground, and before she could recollect herself, her mother said in a loud, horrible voice, “Stay out!”

The door slammed shut on her vengeful face, leaving Cloud broken and scared. There was simply too much for her to process at once.

“‘Monster’?” she said to herself, her throat itching with dryness as she struggled to get to her feet. Her arms visibly shook, and now, under the warm evening sun, she could see how pale her skin was—to the point that branches of red and blue, palpable just beneath her thin, stretched flesh, surged with the toxic glow of mako. Compounded by matted bangs, so blonde they appeared white, hanging in front of her eyes and clinging to her clammy face, she felt ill thinking about how she must've looked to normal people. Maybe her mother had a reason to perceive her as a threat. Her fangs and claws were still present, after all, and absolutely no help for her image.

That made her heart ache more than every bone in her body, the fact she couldn't even be recognized by her own mother…The only person who had made her feel safe, loved, happy—throwing her out to waste outside like she was nothing of value. She didn't mean a thing to her. She didn't mean a thing to anyone else, and her mother left her completely alone. Without anyone to turn to, tears manifested as warm streams running down her cold cheeks, a futile protest against the cruelty of the universe. She stifled a few sobs and limped away from what was supposedly her old home, no longer caring that Nibelheim wasn't where she should've been. She hadn't any clue as to where she could go, though she slowed down once a voice started to slip past her ears.

A woman’s voice, delicate and maternal. Cloud stilled, mesmerized. Within the innermost recesses of her mind, the darkest corners where her primordial instincts lurked, a familiarity far older than herself cried out, forcing her body to move on its own accord. This voice, her voice…this was Mother’s voice.

She needed to find her.

She didn’t know how long she walked, or what direction she had taken or where the rest of her hometown went, but soon enough she found herself staring up at the Nibel Reactor. Something distant nagged her, telling her that this was wrong, she shouldn’t be doing this, she needed to stop now. Mother’s voice soon drowned that out, however, and she tore one of the iron doors off its hinges, then stepped inside without so much as a thought as to what she was doing.

She needed to find her.

Under the hot yellow lights, the red door tucked all the way in the back beckoned her—how it shone so clearly, as if it knew how to tempt her—and Mother was inviting her inside, to come closer, to _reunite_ with her.

She needed her.

The red door relented without needing an ounce of effort, and she trudged forward, stationing herself before the tank they trapped her in. Mother’s red eyes were so beautiful…Wasn’t there supposed to be something blocking her from being seen? …Did it matter?

The voice that rose from Cloud’s throat wasn’t her own. “Don’t worry, Mother…I’m here now.”

When she raised a hand to touch the glass barrier separating the two of them, she found it impossible to describe the surge of emotions rising in her chest upon seeing that her hand was gloved in black.

“Elmyra, I’m…worried about her.”

“I understand. She’s not like she usually is…I wonder…”

“Do you think she’s been hiding from me? From the others?”

“I can’t answer that. You’ll have to…”

Cloud could recognize that voice anywhere—even in the awful half-awake state she was in now—but how’d she end up here?

She blinked a couple of times until her vision sharpened, and when she looked to the open doorway, two women were seated near her, watching her. Panic overrode her rationale and she scrambled to sit up in bed while her heart beat harder against her ribs. Even though she knew both of them, it was only when Tifa leaned forward slightly and gave her a concerned grimace did she realize how foolish she looked.

“So your eyes really are…” Tifa settled back in her chair, seemingly dejected. Her hair was a lot messier than usual, and she wasn’t wearing her normal outfit (just some sort of dark t-shirt with shorts). Her red eyes were bloodshot as well. “When did that happen?”

Cloud didn’t register her question for a moment or two, her appearance was that startling. “Wha—my eyes? Oh, they…I don’t really remember when they changed. It happened recently, but that’s all I can say.”

“That’s not helpful, but…I don’t know what we can do about it, either. Do you think they’ll be stuck like that forever?”

“I hope not, this is the last thing I need right now…” She changed the topic upon sensing a lull in the room. “How’d you know I was here? Did Elmyra tell you?”

“Yes. Called me over the phone about you, saying she was curious if I wanted to visit, and, well, here we are—I hope we’re not disturbing you?”

Cloud shook her head. If they weren’t there, she suspected she’d just spend the whole day sleeping while Elmyra carried on with herself. Or at least, she’d try to sleep—and probably fail.

“I mean, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. We haven’t seen each other in a while and I was starting to worry something had happened to you, you were completely silent on your end. Elmyra also told me you weren’t feeling well. Is that true?”

No point in hiding it. “…Yeah.”

An awkward silence settled over them. She had a feeling that Tifa wanted to make their conversation personal, though she didn’t want to upset Elmyra for whatever reason. So instead of carrying on their discussion, everyone withdrew into themselves. Cloud turned over in her bed, Elmyra started to fiddle with the frayed edges of her dress, and Tifa herself started to study the room’s decor more closely. In the corner of her eyes, Cloud noticed that Tifa kept gravitating to that painting above the window.

It wasn’t much longer before she stood up, taking a few steps closer to inspect the painting even more.

Then Tifa narrowed her eyes and said in a low voice, “I’ve seen this woman before.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what a twist


	4. A Mother's Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a little slower paced but i hope you enjoy the new chapter

Once Elmyra left the room at Cloud’s request, Cloud wasted no time in inquiring Tifa about the woman in the painting.

“She’s a real person? And you’ve personally seen her?”

Tifa nodded. “Yes, when I was younger.” She seemed to be staring at something past the window. “For the longest time I thought I was insane, because whenever I told my dad or anyone else about her, they just looked at me strangely…”

Cloud couldn't help but recall what Elmyra was telling her about Tifa's maternal lineage. Maybe she wasn't as sane as she presented herself.

“But, Cloud, the thing is—she was very real to me! I went to the mountains a lot and she was always there, waiting for me. She told me often how much she missed me, that she was worried that I was lost…She never hurt me. I think she was lonely.”

“You never thought about why she was there? Or ever thought about…pretty much everything else about her?”

“Absolutely! It's just…It was difficult to think in her presence. I want to say it made you do irrational things, but that wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense, now would it?”

“No, I think I know where you’re coming from.” Flashes of Sephiroth’s smiling face flickered in her mind, and before she could stop herself, she flinched. Tifa didn’t appear to notice, though—she was too busy staring at her own feet. “Was she seen anywhere else? Because if she wasn’t, then why was she only in the mountains?”

“She wasn’t, and I don’t really have a clue. She’s still mostly a mystery, honestly.” She was quiet, momentarily. “I’m sorry I can’t provide you with any more answers. Hard to remember everything when it happened long ago, you know.”

Cloud understood how that felt. Most of her childhood lived in her mind as fragments, contaminated with a rosy tint that blinded her to the reality of her early life; and it didn’t help that she couldn’t grasp at any idea of what that reality might’ve been. Sometimes, in her dreams, those distorted memories took the stage—often with extra incorrect details to throw her off, to compound the confusion surrounding what was real and what wasn’t. Was she bedridden for a majority of her time as a four year old? Perhaps. Was there a chance she had moved into Nibelheim at the age of seven? Possibly. Had she ever seen her father, no matter how small of a glimpse the moment probably was? Maybe. She feared the day she’d struggle to remember her mother. She was already nothing more than a sliver of memory for most people, and for her own daughter to forget her? Too painful. She didn’t deserve to be forgotten, and yet…Cloud was already seeing mental deterioration devouring the other aspects of her life. It was guaranteed that she’d forget her family. The worst part, she suspected, wasn’t going to be when that day came. It was the fact that she would never notice the memory wipe happen. Her mind was her greatest enemy—not Sephiroth.

For it was an enemy she couldn’t fight.

“Are you alright? You look miserable.”

She looked up. She didn’t realize she had been hanging her head.

“I mean, if you need to rest, you can just tell me.”

“I’m…” She was about to lie. “You wouldn’t mind, would you? If I wanted to be left alone?”

“No, of course not…I need to get back to Barret and Marlene, see how they’re holding up…I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, ignoring the pain in her heart telling her to hold onto Tifa. She always hated being alone—that was when the voices descended on her subconscious, feeding on her existential horror and feeding her horrible lies. Solitude meant having to grapple with herself and every hallucination her J-cells could conjure, from Sephiroth breathing down her neck to her own voice pressuring her to end herself.

Most of all, however, she dreaded that if she told anyone else about her situation, they would abandon her. She always worried about that, even when she had first returned to Midgar. Whenever she had one of her “episodes”, as the others called them, and recovered (to some extent), she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about how much of a burden she must’ve been. How much the others hated her, how much of a weakling she was, how much better off the planet would’ve been had she died at birth…

After Tifa repaired her mind to the best of her ability, that anxiety never went away. It was always there, lurking in the darkest corners of her mind as if it were a chained, drooling beast waiting for its next meal. She knew that over the past decade, it gradually crept up on her once more, but she found herself incapable of doing anything to save herself from it. Instead, she accepted it, much like she had accepted the J-cells forever being a corruptive influence over her.

Her vision clouded, and by the time the tears trickled from her eyes, Tifa had already left.

She didn’t sleep. The golden rays of the rising sun were peering through cracks in the shuttered window, burning her eyes and fostering more resentment deep within her. Her headache and nausea were still debilitating, in fact even worse now as she couldn’t sit up without fighting back the urge to vomit. Her mind was running all over the place, fueled by panic she had brought upon herself by recalling buried, decade-old memories; in which she kept returning to one of their run-ins with Hojo and what he told them about Sephiroth.

The entire encounter was strange. She didn’t even remember where it happened, but it was somewhere dull and grey, and it wasn’t the same one where he decided to inject himself with Jenova’s DNA and transformed into that hideous creature. He was still just as unhinged, granted, but he didn’t seem as haughty as he was in every other instance. Definitely pleased with…something. Arguably fatherly, as much as it sickened her to refer to Hojo as such.

“I would advise all of you to keep watch on that blonde of yours. I am certain you have already seen what she is capable of, if she wills it. How much longer will it be before her violent tendencies consume her entirely? She is very much like Sephiroth. And we’re all familiar with what became of him, correct?” He took a second to smile horribly at all of them while they focused on her. Considering the weakness of her knees and the sweat collecting on her face, she must’ve looked as she felt.

“It will not take much for her to break. Why, I imagine she’s been broken before—multiple times! But this break will be much worse, and it remains to be seen as to what can trigger it. It will be fun for me and everyone else here to watch that moment unfold…” He burst into a series of haunting cackles, his condensed, frail body shaking with the thrill of insanity, fading away as Cloud found herself in the present, dwelling on one particular sentence.

_She is very much like Sephiroth._

Was that true at any point in her life after the Incident? Was it true at any point in her life after Sephiroth was killed? She glanced at her claws, retracting and protracting them once or twice in the span of a minute, ashamed at what they represented. She remembered the fight deep in the planet’s core, where he drew close enough to dig into her face with his own talons. Perhaps more disturbingly, he then savored her blood, letting it dribble down his bare arm as she tried to nurse the new gash across her cheek… 

Her tongue ran across her teeth, twitching a little every time a tooth’s needle-fine point pricked it. They weren’t human, and neither were his own. He never smiled when he was sane…

And her eyes—gods, how she hated her green eyes…

But all of them were superficial similarities, purely physical. As long as she wasn’t like him in regards to personality, she was fine, she concluded, pushing down the nagging feeling that she couldn’t ever be truly sure of what her real personality was.

_She is very much like Sephiroth._

What did he know that she didn’t?

“How’d you sleep?”

“Not good,” Cloud said as she descended the flight of stairs and entered Elmyra’s kitchen. She didn’t like the visible shock on Elmyra’s face. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh, it’s…You’ve gotten very pale…” She said it quickly before turning back around to prod the eggs in the frying pan. After tweaking the stove’s flames, she continued, “I would say you should see a doctor, but I haven’t any ideas as to where you could find a trustworthy one in this landscape.”

Cloud took up one of the two empty seats at the table, catching the table’s edge in the face of another spell of vertigo. Instead of focusing on that, though, she instead gravitated toward the suggestion of a doctor’s visit. She hated all things medical, and even if the doctor she met was kind hearted, she doubted she could ever trust them. Just the thought of undergoing surgery made her nausea stronger, and for a queasy second or two she almost vomited all over the table’s varnished surface.

She wouldn’t tell Elmyra about her “medical history”, of course. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

“Well, _I_ don’t think it’s a good idea to be dismissive.” Elmyra shot her a knowing, concerned look. “Aerith was the exact same way…”

“I don’t want to go to a doctor.”

“Why not? I’ll find you a good one. I simply hope it doesn’t take so long that you’ll be, you know…”

“I just don’t. Besides, all of this will pass in a couple days or so. I’m sure of it.” That searing, writhing sensation was beginning to flare up in her chest again—something was agitating her J-cells.

Elmyra let the flames die, then prodded the eggs once again, inspecting them to see if they fit her definition of satisfactory. “Are you sure your illness is going to pass? Considering what I’ve heard from your friends, a lot of this seems to be related to you having…alien DNA or something like that? I don’t fully understand it, but you do know what I’m saying, right?”

 _What did Tifa tell her?_ “Yeah, but I figured this was…something not caused by my—uh, the DNA.”

Silence arose after Elmyra laid a plate in front of her, eggs over easy situated rather neatly between the blue floral patterns painted on the dish. She watched as Cloud stared at them, then pushed them away.

“Sorry.” She looked away. “I’m not really hungry.” If they were scrambled, she might’ve eaten them. And if they were her mother’s scrambled eggs, she would’ve ignored her sickness with great pleasure.

“I understand,” Elmyra said, taking them out of her sight. She started eying the eggs as if her life suddenly depended on them, all while she furrowed her brow in guilt. “I’m just worried about what Tifa told me—”

“What’d she tell you?” She didn’t intend to blurt it out.

“That…I should keep an eye out for you because of your tendency to fall violently ill. Cloud, what’s wrong? There’s something more personal going on, isn’t there?”

“I…” She was absolutely paralyzed, unsure of what she could say or what she wanted to say. The tact she had in hiding her inner conflicts was broken the moment she spoke too fast, godammit—

Something was ringing, and it took her a moment to recognize that it was the landline phone sounding out. Within the blink of an eye, Elmyra glanced at her and picked it up.

“Hello? Who is this? Oh, it’s…Yes? That’s good to hear…Hm? You want to know…I see. Absolutely. That’s what I’ve been saying…Yes, yes, she’s right here…”

Cloud’s stomach knotted at her last few words, and she imagined her horror wasn’t particularly obscured when Elmyra motioned for her to come over. She obliged, reluctantly, not speaking until Elmyra added, “It’s Tifa.”

For some reason she felt stupid putting the phone up to her ear. “Hello?”

“I wanted to ask you something.” Tifa’s voice was wildly different from what she was used to. It was colder, more detached. “Shera wants to show you her latest research because, um…I’m not really sure, exactly. She said she’ll be at the bar in a couple of days. Do you think you’ll be able to come?”

 _Why the hell does she want to see me?_ “What, you think I can’t handle being by myself?”

Tifa sighed. “Cloud, we all know that you’ve developed some sort of condition over the past few days. I’ve seen you at your worst and _I_ know that you can be very vulnerable. I just want to make sure that you’ve put a lot of thought into doing something like this, since who’s to say that you’re not going to worsen?”

There she went, babying her like she was a step above complete vegetable. Especially ridiculous now since she was looking to be thirty-two in August. Was Marlene babied as often as she was?

“I know myself better than you.” Tifa didn’t respond. “…I’ll call you later.” She hung up and turned around, pretending that she wasn’t going to think about what she just said.

Elmyra’s bewildered stare didn’t help her newfound anxiety.

Maybe it was a bad idea, but Cloud went to the old church anyway.

She slipped out noiselessly as she departed from Elmyra’s home, much to her relief. She didn’t want to disturb her and she didn’t want to be disturbed. People were so tricky like that: it was draining to be around them all the time…

She started to reminisce about the early days of her youth, where she could enjoy herself without worrying about the judgement of others. They were short lived, but they might’ve been her happiest days on the planet. Just her and her mother, blissfully ignorant of humanity’s cruelty, blissfully ignorant of the world’s eventual end, blissfully ignorant of the Incident, blissfully ignorant of everything horrible and blissfully aware only of each other.

The frigid night air bit into her skin, and she drew her dark cloak closer to her body. An old, holey sheet extracted from Elmyra’s attic, it still managed to serve its purpose as an insulator. She had told Cloud that they found her wrapped up in it when she was a toddler—wait, did she say that, or did someone else say it? It might’ve been her mother? She couldn’t say for sure, yet that hardly mattered.

She contemplated more on her old life, and how her mother was the only person in her life that truly understood her. Aerith came close, and Tifa came even closer (ignoring her tendencies to marginalize her intelligence), and yet, there never failed to be something they couldn’t connect with. Cloud never sensed that with her mother. It was something more powerful than an instinctual bond—she could really only liken it to them sharing one mind, as bizarre as that seemed.

She shivered once more. The night air grew colder with every step she took, and once she could make out the church’s sagging, moonlit form, a wintry gale began to swirl around her. She quickened her pace, while her cloak was tightened against her body.

She didn’t truly understand why she wanted to go to the church so badly, or what compelled her to leave the comfort of the guest bed. Occasionally the concern of her J-cells piloting her rose up within her mind, only for it to be washed away with renewed, intensive desire to enter the church. And even when the “bugs” squirmed beneath her skin, she ignored them, pushing forward just so she could satisfy her desires.

She knew where to go after she wrenched one of the doors open—Aerith’s golden flower bed. Taking extra precaution as to not trample on them when she seated herself in their midst, she stilled after she got herself settled.

She still couldn’t answer the question of her wanting to be here. She wanted to say it was because she longed to see Aerith again, but she hadn’t been here in…two, maybe even three weeks.

And if it wasn’t Aerith she was there for, then what was she seeking? Why didn’t she understand her own desires? Why was she such a mess, both physically and mentally?

She had also forgotten about calling Tifa back and, possibly, apologizing for what she said to her back in the kitchen. It was unprompted and filled with indignation. It was a burst of anger that, as grotesque as it sounded to her, erupted naturally. She should’ve shown some basic level of decency and addressed Tifa’s habit of mothering others (especially her), in a way that wasn’t aggressive—even though, frustratingly, Tifa often shut down whenever she was confronted about something. Was she even worse off now since Cloud never followed through her words? Probably.

How embarrassing all of it was, for her to behave no better than Marlene on one of her bad days. Surely she was better than that—surely her mother didn’t raise her to be emotionally stunted.

And how badly she wanted to talk to her now…She’d know what to say, she’d know how to calm her down without making her feel petulant, she’d know what to do. She always knew best, as cliche as that phrase was. She was what she missed most from Nibelheim. Nobody else could make her happy like she did. Why, she couldn’t ever be replaced…

Yet she tried to do that with Elmyra, simultaneously trying to replace her own deceased daughter at the same time. She had moved on from the latter, thank the gods, but she often hesitated when it came to thinking about the former; was she still trying to seek a replacement for her own mother? Realistically she knew she couldn’t—it was like rubber-banding a broken heart into one whole again—though her subconscious behaviors always liked to betray her conscious thought…

She was laying in the flowers now, restraining her movements in fear of damaging them beyond repair (even if they survived a decade of rot, she could never be too careful). The night sky peered down at her through a cavernous hole in the ceiling, and as she stared up into the moon’s full face, she never felt more alone than she did now.

Every cell in her body was screaming, bile at the back of her throat had to be fought down so as not to trigger another round of vomiting, her clammy skin forced her to shiver, and that knife was still piercing her brain. Everything hurt, on top of her J-cells making her organs itch so intensely that she wanted to slice her abdomen and claw at her guts.

If only Mother was there to make her feel better.

She didn’t know when or how, but as she woke up in the flower bed, the sky still a dark velvet blue, she found herself in a woman’s lap. She should’ve been afraid, although she couldn’t find it within her to fear anymore.

The woman was running her long fingers through her hair, and it felt so good. She didn’t want to move, in fact.

“You’ve grown so much,” the woman said in a soft, warm voice, one that could make anyone melt. Cloud’s thoughts were beginning to lessen in her presence, she was beginning to feel herself grow dull, she was slipping away from herself—and she was loving every second of it. “How long has it been since we were last together?”

 _Far too long_ , was her instinctual reaction. She shouldn't have known the answer. She didn’t care.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have visited you sooner. I was…how do you say it, a little caught up in other affairs. But that doesn’t matter anymore, now does it? Mother missed you gravely…”

“I…I missed you too…Mother…” Her speech was becoming more fragmented by the second. Processing whatever was left of her waning mind was rapidly becoming difficult.

“Such a good girl you are, Cloud…Claudia had raised you well.” She sensed a smile forming on Mother’s face. “It’s a shame she isn’t around now, I think she’d be quite pleased to see me, too.”

Cloud longed for her warmth, the warmth they had robbed her of years ago, the emptiness deep within her demanding to be sealed. When Mother embraced her, she allowed herself to be taken into her loving arms, and for once she finally felt complete, that missing half of hers reunited with the rest of her being. She couldn’t think properly anymore, and she was lightheaded, empty-headed, as if she wasn’t really there in the church—was it a church?—as if she wasn’t really there at all, as if she never existed in the first place, but…

All of it felt so good.

She admired Mother’s sharp crimson eyes and her bright-white hair, her delicate face and her lovely smile, too. There was something strangely familiar about her, though Cloud couldn’t explain where that familiarity was coming from. That didn’t matter. Mother was here, with her, and she could only care about that, for Mother made her feel safe and loved.

Her wings were just as beautiful as everything else about her, as well…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow cloud how come your mom lets you have two moms


	5. About the Cetra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are beginning to pick up >:)

_Remember, Cloud. Mother will always be watching over you._

Cloud was back in the guest room’s bed with the afternoon sunlight searing her skin. The knife had burrowed into the very core of her brain, blurring the corners of her eyes, making everything encompassing her innermost self throb with a bitter ache. Thoughts diffused across her subconscious membrane in disconnected pieces, most incoherent and bordering on insanity, some just barely rational enough so that their fear remained palpable. A metal sting bit her tongue as it sank itself deeper into the walls of her mouth. Something might’ve moved in her stomach.

“Cloud?” That was…Elmyra, wasn’t it? “How do you feel?”

It took far too long for her to respond somewhat properly. “What…happened?”

“I found you passed out in the church,” Elmyra said, clutching what looked to be a white rag in her hands, though Cloud couldn’t be quite certain of that. She was positively fried mentally and physically, like every other time Sephiroth tried to possess her and failed. But he was dead, how’d she end up— “You were freezing cold to the touch, too. I brought you back in here, and after a while you suddenly screamed! I tried to figure out what was wrong, but you were…um, mumbling a bunch of nonsense about the world ending and wanting to see your mother? You…kind of scared me, honestly.”

“I don’t…remember that.”

“You don’t? Not even a little bit of it?”

“No.”

There was a long pause before Elmyra spoke again. “You’re getting worse—”

“I don’t wanna go to a doctor,” she said, slipping under the sheets a little more. Her tongue felt bloated. Hopefully Elmyra didn’t notice a change in her speech. 

“But a visit might be the only thing that can help you.”

She knew Elmyra was right, though she didn’t want to admit it. The thought of being probed by a doctor made her sicker, and her vision blurred even more, to the point it hurt to see. In response, she forced her eyes shut.

“I’ll leave you alone for a while. Just keep in mind that I’m going to look for help, alright?”

She nodded, contemplating what Elmyra had said, and turned over in her bed once the door shut.

If only her mother was still alive…

The next few days passed by in hazy, uncertain snippets. She was at the kitchen table, flipping over a piece of some unidentifiable meat but never bothering to eat it. She was outside, protectively shrouded in her cloak since the sun often sapped her energy on her worst days, admiring the flowers Aerith had left behind. She was in the bathroom, that strange black fluid spilling from her mouth and pooling in the sink. She was in her bed, staring back at a woman who was watching her.

Maybe that last one didn’t happen? Maybe it did? She had seen crazier things, after all.

And most importantly, she couldn’t care anymore.

After a few painful minutes of convincing Elmyra to let her go, she went straight for Fenrir. Today was the day Shera was expecting her at Seventh Heaven for reasons beyond her. Elmyra refused to listen when she said she felt decent enough to travel, even though that was the truth (despite that awful headache robbing her of complex thought and her J-cells clawing at her lungs). She seemed convinced that Cloud’s condition could only worsen—her motherly instincts must’ve been kicking in. Appeasing her meant she had to agree to, embarrassingly, a curfew—no later than nine.

She grumbled that everyone was starting to baby her as she started Fenrir up. When she’d finally get to the bar, she imagined Barret would join in, perhaps in a manner far ruder than anyone else. Maybe Shera would do it, too. If Marlene did it as well, she’d leave. It felt like no one acknowledged her personhood.

Is that what was causing her frustration? Everyone acting like she was too different from anyone else to be treated normally?

That sounded wrong. She knew she was far more different than anyone else, it was her own fault for being annoyed whenever someone responded to her accordingly.

_She is very much like Sephiroth._

That damn Hojo…Her grip tightened on Fenrir’s handles. If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be constantly agonizing over her existence for the rest of her life. Nobody would be afraid of her, nobody would change themselves just so they could interact with her, nobody would hate her. Why couldn’t he have killed her during one of his countless experiments? Why did she have to live with her inhumanity while Zack was freed from that curse years ago?

She was losing more of herself every day. She’d wake up, not remembering that she was Cloud, and then freeze at the sight of herself in the bathroom mirror during her morning routine, that horrible twist in her gut telling her how wrong it was that she didn’t know whose reflection the "person" belonged to. On particularly bad days she’d see Sephiroth instead, smirking at her, disturbingly _real_ , like she was looking into another universe where AVALANCHE failed to stop him. He’d never say anything, of course, since he was just another cruel hallucination, though there was always that strange feeling that he was plotting something else as he stared into her eyes…

Sometimes she dreamed that as she aged, she’d end up developing his likeness, then eventually devolve into pure insanity and try to accomplish what he never finished. It never failed that a moment where she’d attempt to slice Tifa’s head off would emerge, bubbling forth from a distorted mesh between her deepest fears and her vaguest memories. Memories of what, she would never know.

Occasionally as she wandered into her mind, Cloud would look up to ensure that she was on the right route, and see that, among the blocky, decaying buildings of exhausting grey shades considered “scenery”, a small shadowy figure would be perched upon the highest points of these skeletal structures, sometimes seen through a hole in one of the buildings’ stories. The figure would duck out of sight the moment she spotted them.

 _Well, that explains the feeling of being watched_ , she thought to herself. She wasn’t particularly surprised—it had been haunting her ever since she started her delivery service, and her paranoia told her it was Sephiroth, in some form, following her from afar, monitoring her so that his revenge could finally be enacted when the time was right. It was ridiculous, but rationality wasn’t something that Cloud understood anymore.

To have a bit of fun, she’d acknowledge the figure wherever they manifested next, taking great amusement in them scrambling every time she whistled or pointed. Doing so also gave her more time to study them for details, and eventually she could make out the figure wearing a dark, sleek suit, with bandages wrapped around their head. There wasn’t an ounce of doubt as to what they were—one of the Turks.

By now she was back in Midgar, on the highway with that particular Turk greatly interested in her. Another glimpse at them on a building leaning toward her revealed their short, blonde hair. Elena. She hadn’t a clue as to why that one would be pursuing her; she was the only Turk that actively went out of her way to avoid her. The others would either confront her or outright fight her, but Elena would run off at the faintest hint of conflict, mumbling that she had “important business” to attend to. Then she remembered Tifa informing her, at one point, that like Tseng, Elena was often tasked with handling paperwork instead of violence, explaining her apparent cowardice.

From what little else she had seen of her, Elena was perpetually a bumbling type—the sort to trip over nothing. Perhaps she was rather intelligent in non-combative pursuits, similar to how Shera was, because Cloud couldn’t find any other reason as to why Rufus would insist on keeping her (or leave her to be the one stalking her, wouldn’t Tseng be a better fit?). Unless he was using her to absolve himself of his loneliness, considering she was the only female Turk, and considering how shady everyone from Shinra was. Almost made her sympathetic. Almost.

The last time Cloud looked at her, she was speaking into a transceiver, seemingly irritated with the man on the other end. She could only wonder what she was telling her master.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Shera said to her the moment she entered the bar, her voice strained with excitement. She stopped briefly upon seeing Cloud back away from her, then added, “Sorry…I’ve just made a breakthrough that will change everything!”

“Next time you’re here, could you not…literally be next to the door?” Cloud rubbed her eyes. Were Seventh Heaven’s lights always this bright? “Scared the hell out of me.”

“Yeah, yeah—Cloud, look at this!” She pulled out the massive suitcase hiding behind her legs, letting it slam on the ground, then clicked open the hinges that sealed it shut. A flood of countless papers, mysterious samples, and boxes started spilling out of it as soon as it started to open. “You remember how I dedicated myself to studying Shinra’s archives, right?”

Cloud nodded, uncertain of where she was going with this. Where were Tifa and the others?

“I forgot to mention that I’ve been researching everything I can about Jenova—and the Cetra! Both subjects are so fascinating, wouldn’t you agree?”

Cloud nodded again, her patience thinning with every passing second. Damn, did Shera love to blather…especially when it came to biology. Strange how she never pursued that field instead.

“I think I’m this close to understanding the Cetran language…” Shera grabbed a bunch of sheets that were scattered amongst their feet. Insane gibberish was scribbled on the ones she grabbed, leaving Cloud to guess that was the “language” she was referring to. “I’ve recorded every instance I’ve found where they mentioned Jenova—see that word right there? That’s what they called her—Gast had crudely translated it to ‘calamity’, and I believe he was right. But then, do you see that? The one I’ve written just below it? It looks nearly identical, right? From what I can understand, that word roughly means, ‘blessing’. Considering how similar they are, structurally, and considering what contexts I found both words in, Jenova might’ve once been…”

“A _blessing_ from the skies?” Cloud said in disbelief, her bewilderment deepening as Shera smiled hugely. “How? Why? What would’ve changed that?”

“That’s the thing—we don’t know much about her history, and that’s why I think Gast was mostly wrong. Look at what else I’ve found—”

She pulled two long cylinders from the suitcase, sloshing around the dark red fluid inside them.

“Is that blood? Where in the hell did you get—”

“One’s a sample of Ifalna’s blood, the other is, believe it or not, a sample of Jenova’s blood—yes, she had blood in her at one point, I guess.” She was prompted to speak by Cloud’s horror. “I got these from Shinra’s remaining labs. Most of them were underground facilities…But anyway, you know how they did a lot of experiments on Ifalna? They did the same with Jenova. Lots of running DNA through various machines, and the results of which I’ve got, too. In the first few years of ‘owning’ her, they never got anything good. All they’d get were either errors or ‘undefined’, nonsense answers. In 1970, something changed…I don’t know what happened then. Take a look for yourself. One packet is Ifalna’s entire genetic sequence. The other is Jenova’s.”

Cloud narrowed her eyes, only growing more confused the longer she observed the papers. Every nucleotide she understood was strung to a strange symbol she’d never seen before; these symbols could only be likened to garbled blocks of printing errors. The longer either sequence progressed, the more and more of these blocks took up the page, until the very end where it was just inky chaos. The same happened on the backs of the sheets. Jenova’s packet was arguably more incomprehensible, and the blocks manifested faster.

She peered at Shera over the sheets, feeling herself scowl. “What am I even looking at here?”

“The understandable portions are what you’d expect from the human genome. Those weird ones, that look like glitches in the machines’ readouts? Those are the portions that, I believe, were unique to the Cetra. Aerith’s sequence had a few glitches, too, although by the time she was born they had cracked _most_ of the Cetran genes.”

“That can’t actually mean…” Cloud shook her head. She didn’t want Sephiroth to be right about anything, he couldn’t have been right about his blood. He was wrong, everything about him was wrong, he shouldn't be right about anything—

“Oh yes it can! It gets better. From 1970 onward, they attempted to sequence Jenova’s DNA every year, and every year revealed more of what the blocks were supposed to be, partly due to what they found out about _Ifalna_. The files from the labs also indicate that someone new to Shinra had assisted in the breakthroughs, but all the ones I found had the personal data about this individual whited out…”

“But that means Jenova was—”

“A member of Ifalna’s people some time ago.” Shera tipped her glasses toward her, looking smug. “The real mystery begins now.”

Cloud shouldn’t have fallen asleep. There were far too many pressing questions for her to rest, far too many theories and suspicions that her brain found itself running a circular rut in her head. Everything was happening too fast, she needed to reach out to someone, she needed to tell Elmyra what was bothering her, she couldn’t keep hiding this anymore, she should’ve tried to call Tifa or Barret for support, especially when they weren’t available when she was at the bar, she needed to tell someone how she was falling apart, she needed to figure out if Shera’s words were accurate, she still didn’t understand why Shera was telling her all of this, Jenova couldn’t have ever possibly been human, not when she had seen Jenova herself in multiple horrible forms, everything was wrong, and then—

The darkness consumed her.

When she came to, she was in a room of her worst nightmares. From every corner she could see, there were numerous Sephiroths watching her, some trapped in chambers while others were strapped down to operating tables. She blinked, and saw that she was in a large lab, the bright operating lights highlighting gruesome details that she wished she couldn’t make out. Many of these Sephiroths were, in fact, dead, either thanks to experimentation or some genetic flaw that killed them.

Some were closer to approaching humanity than others, with some being exact copies of him, while others were indecipherable tangles of tumorous, inhuman flesh. Some were female and others were ambiguous. Some were mostly in pristine condition, kept in their chambers to brine forever in mako, while some were dissected so often that what was left of them was often one half of their heads. Some were still alive, either banging on the glass of their prisons or failing to fight their leather restraints, causing bright blood to stain their surgical drapes. These live ones would sometimes look at her as if to silently plead for help, making her more disoriented and more ill.

She was in the back of the room, and she got up, her legs weak and threatening to fold in on themselves, only to sense something press against her spine. She turned around to see what it was and screamed. Another Sephiroth, sealed in a chamber like some of the others, had her lower abdomen ripped off to expose partially gangrenous organs Cloud had never seen before, with one quarter of her skull removed as well, revealing a swollen, bruised brain. She placed one white palm against the glass, right where she would’ve grabbed Cloud’s face, her bloodshot eyes piercing through Cloud’s heart.

She fell over as she tried to run away, shrieking once more and scrambling to get back on her feet. She searched the room, and realized that the only doors she could see were either locked, or entrances to more rooms, presumably with more scientific abominations waiting for her. She couldn’t escape.

Did she belong with these Sephiroths?

She sought out a reflective surface, finding it near her original position in the shape of an empty tank against the back wall. Once her face became clear, a pit formed in the bottom of her stomach—she resembled a younger, more effeminate version of him, the differences being that her eyes were turquoise and her hair was bright white. A hospital gown adorned her person.

Then she noticed the control panel near the base of the tank, which had a torn piece of paper attached to it. The paper read, _New place for Subject AB-86. Unsure of whether or not it should be kept alive during experiments._

She hadn’t much time to process what its meaning was since the door to her left suddenly swung open. She almost tripped in fear, spinning around to see who opened it.

“There you are! Oh, gods,” said a woman in a lab coat, who came over and embraced her. Cloud could recognize that voice anywhere…but she shouldn’t have been here at all. “What was he thinking, putting you in a place like this? I’m so sorry—it won’t happen again, I promise. In a room with the prototypes, no less! I should’ve known he’d—never mind, let’s get you out of here. Who knows what he’s done to your mind…”

She wasn’t sure if she should’ve been relieved or scared upon looking into her mother’s bright blue eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the ending's kind of wack, but it will be worthwhile, trust me...


	6. Autophobia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter  
> slow start, but it'll be worth it.  
> btw, there's going to be slightly more swearing in this chapter than usual, just though i'd put that out there in case anyone would be bothered by it.  
> hopefully you'll enjoy

In spite of everything that was beginning to unfold, Cloud remained silent about her inner workings, and eventually returned to her delivery service like nothing was wrong. She only chose to hide her feelings in fear of criticism or dismissiveness—being criticized hurt, but being ignored was far more painful for her. She didn’t want to be alone. She couldn’t be alone, her sanity—whatever was left of it—couldn’t afford it. And yet, life forced her into the cruelest situations…

Elmyra’s soft, saddened voice rang into her head. _“Cloud, if you need help…just ask for it! There’s nothing wrong with asking…”_

She was alone on the road, fulfilling an order in Kalm, so she audibly groaned. Everyone was always telling her that, how everyone was available if she ever had to reach out, and yet, in the few instances she did try to seek company, whoever she contacted never failed to push back. The excuse was often something “important” had popped up in their lives, and evidently whatever these somethings were, they were so critical that they couldn’t afford to waste their time with her. Fine. She’d struggle along the beaten track of life, by herself, like she was clearly meant to do. Assuming, of course, their excuses weren’t lies created to keep her away.

Maybe they only cared about her because she was the only one capable of killing Sephiroth, and if she died, the planet died with her. That had to be it. Why else would they keep dragging around a mentally unstable woman whose frequent mental breakdowns left her incapacitated for a week? Hell, she was surprised they didn’t just dump her in a home after everything was said and done (she certainly had enough nightmares about that scenario).

What a fitting end for something like her. Left to rot in some nondescript, barely-staying-open group home, her J-cells finally stealing the last of her coherent thoughts; in her twilight years she’d be forever stuck in a grey cell-like room, laughing and mumbling to herself on her stupid little cot of a bed, drooling onto her hospital gown while some poor overworked nurse tried to feed her her boiled cabbage dinner. This scene would repeat every day until she died.

She wondered if a similar fate would have befallen Sephiroth had he not gone insane, as she very distinctly remembered stumbling across one of Hojo’s written rants—where he claimed that the power Jenova’s DNA gave someone didn’t last forever, and he feared that his beloved science project would be thrown out the minute he outlived his usefulness…Why did she still care about him? He was gone, permanently, but she kept finding herself going back to him.

It was like he was still influencing her and the very thought made her sick. Surely no one else thought about him as much as she did, they had all moved on since his demise. Why couldn’t she move on?

She still saw him everywhere, still heard him everywhere, still _felt_ him everywhere. She often woke up thinking she still had to kill him, leaving her on edge for the rest of the day. Other times he’d be in her apartment, right on her bed with her, smiling and silently reaching for her throat while her muscles refused to move. If she tried to watch anything on the CRT television in the living room, she’d always see him glimpsing at her from the kitchen or the bedroom, studying her at her most defenseless. She never saw him outside the apartment building at night, but the voices were loud enough to keep her from staying out for long. They were louder than Midgar’s city din…

A long time ago, she realized that, no matter what was bothering her, from her concerns regarding other people, to her paranoid delusions involving Sephiroth, to her own state of mind, as long as she continued to exist, she’d never find peace.

Cloud Strife was cursed to live.

The midnight sky signaled her to seek an inn. She was in Junon now, having just finished the last delivery for today; trying to go back home at this time suggested another ripe opportunity for a hellish bout of delirium, and she wasn’t particularly in the mood to deal with it. She never was, though this time she was beyond exhausted. A small portion of herself wondered why, albeit not for long as she hurriedly blew off any more worries.

She paid the innkeeper the amount he asked for and went upstairs. One bed in the right corner of the room was occupied by a short young woman, already fast asleep and completely ignorant of Cloud’s presence. Relieved that she didn’t have to wait until the other person passed out to rest, Cloud took up a bed across from the woman. She couldn’t get too comfortable. The nightmares followed her wherever she went—the worst ones, of course, manifested when she wasn’t in her apartment.

Whenever she tried to sleep at an inn after an arduous round of long-distance deliveries, she inevitably dreamed everyone turning on her, leaving her to die, or even outright killing her. She couldn’t defend herself in these scenarios. Even though she understood, to some extent, that they weren’t real, she always started to cry as they conspired against her, an action that only served to demonstrate how pathetic she was, like she was a baby that nobody wanted. And if it wasn’t a nightmare, it was a flashback. Each one she dreamed about reached deeper into her memory, digging further and further until her dreams were memories she never recalled in the first place. Maybe they weren’t real at all?

…Why would she trust her own judgement? She couldn’t trust herself on anything else.

“She’s a damn menace, that’s what she is!”

The stench of cigarette butts burning her nostrils and the urge to regurgitate her latest meal hurting her stomach…she was on the Highwind again. And while she couldn’t see the speakers from her corner in the crew quarters, she immediately recognized Cid’s sandpaper-like voice clashing with Tifa’s syrupy inflection.

“Why would you say something like that?” Tifa had to yell over the Highwind’s roaring engines. “Why do you keep saying things like that, anyway?”

“Isn’t it obvious? She’s the one that fucked everything up!”

Her heart fell out of her. He must’ve been referring to what happened with the Black Materia…

“That wasn’t her fault! Sephiroth must’ve been—”

“It’s always Sephiroth’s fuckin’ fault with you…Haven’t you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, that it’s her fault? Crazy bitch’s probably been conspirin’ with him this whole time, pretending to go along with your ‘savin’ the planet’ shtick so she could rat you bastards out! How many times did she try to side with him? How many times did she—”

“You’re wrong! Cloud’s not like that—you don’t understand—she was forced to—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Nothing could be heard under the engines for a while. When he spoke up again, he sounded more cruel. “I know her type. She’s a bomb waitin’ to go off. Even if what you say is true, who’s to say she won’t take up Sephiroth’s role once he’s gone? Godammit, she even looks like him! You can keep insistin’ she’s innocent, but don’t be sorry when she starts tryin’ to end the world herself…”

She tuned him out, unwilling to hear any more of his frenzied speech. That was another reason she despised Cid: how quick he was to accuse her of being a vessel for Sephiroth, or, as he was doing right now, accuse her of being something _worse_ than him. Another person claiming how similar they were to each other, as well. Why? She didn’t think they were alike at all, and she certainly couldn’t be as evil as Cid made her out to be. His incessant digs at her and his attempts to turn the rest of AVALANCHE on her always struck her as odd. To her knowledge, she never did anything to him that could’ve warranted such antagonism, unless…Now that she thought about it, there was a good chance her brain had blocked that moment from memory. Like the rest of _those_ moments.

If Hojo had to be correct about anything, it would be, unfortunately, her “violent tendencies”; those rare—but nevertheless—terrifying instances where something inside her would snap during a fight, and she’d go berserk. Her mind would go blank and her vision would turn black, like her consciousness was severing itself from her body. She wouldn’t remember anything that occurred right before or right after she sank into the abyss (the only reason she knew she turned violent was from what the others told her). Her head would be throbbing for hours afterward, her ears ringing, while rational thinking was harder than usual. Most bizarre was the disconnect from reality she developed; until the next day, she’d be suspended in some sort of limbo, watching someone else control her. Something similar had occurred when she returned to Midgar, too—only when they left the city did she feel like she was actually in her own skin. After her sense of identity was restored, somewhat, Tifa postulated that her disconnection might’ve had something to do with her original personality being wiped from Hojo’s experiments. That made a lot of sense. Yet, at the same time…

She couldn’t shake the notion that someone could’ve possessed her, multiple times. Whoever it was, she somehow knew it wasn’t Sephiroth. Their presence was more powerful than his, more gravitational. And…strangely comforting. Even if she was often rendered mindless in their wake, it felt so good. It filled her empty shell with that warmth she longed for so badly, that warmth that no one else could provide besides her mother…

Before she realized it, she wished to be embraced by her once more.

“Zack…can I tell you something?”

Great. Another one of these weird dream-memory mishmashes. Her older conscience was trapped in the mind and body of her teenage self, essentially rendering her a spectator of the past. She remembered this memory (?) was in Nibelheim, near the outskirts where no one else could hear them. 

Even under the shadows of some abandoned antique store, she could see how drastically the experiments had changed her. Her skin wasn’t as ghoulish as it was now, her voice wasn’t as husky, her body wasn’t itchy or achy, her mind was clear. She was…human.

Zack looked eager, like she always remembered him being. Except for that one—no, no. She shouldn’t be thinking about it. “Yeah, what is it?”

Her younger self glanced at the ground, twiddling her fingers. “This might sound weird, and I don’t think you’ll understand, but…I’ve…I’ve never felt like I belonged here.”

“You mean, like, in your own hometown? Maybe you just haven’t—”

“No, not like that.” Zack grew quiet. “It’s different, somehow. I don’t really know how to explain it, it’s just kind of like…I don’t belong _anywhere_. Like I shouldn’t be alive?”

He looked away, and anxiety started to creep up on her. Up to this point in time, her mother had been the only person she confided in when it came to her feelings. His reactions would gauge whether or not she would tell others about such things, and as it seemed right now, she made a big mistake. _I shouldn’t have said anything, now he’s going to think I’m some kind of freak. Why am I so stupid like that?_

“You know, Sephiroth’s said the same thing to me before.”

 _Oh, no, not again._ How strange it was to see herself be excited at something like that, when now it would just induce crushing dread. “Really?”

“Yeah, I never told you that? Dude’s mostly quiet about these things, of course, but sometimes he lets me in on what’s bothering him, and, well…Sounds like you’ve got a similar situation. I—I mean, you’re not hearing any voices or anything, are you?”

“Wha—no? What, you think I’m crazy?”

“Just askin’ ‘cause Sephiroth says he hears voices a lot. I dunno what they say to him…I can’t imagine they’re saying anything good. He’s getting worse. He’s starting to talk to himself, he’s getting more and more violent…They hospitalized him a week ago.” Zack was visibly distraught at this point. Kind of disturbing to see, and something she imagined he wasn’t capable of beforehand. With a sigh, he added, “If you were wondering about where he went…There’s your answer. I couldn’t figure out what exactly they hospitalized him for, either. I’m worried about him, you know?”

_Is he implying the same is going to happen to me eventually? Since we feel the same way?_

“You’re alright, though, right? Besides what you just told me?”

“Not necessarily. I’ve been putting a lot of thought into why I might be feeling this way, and I’m…just not sure what it could be. It’s not like I was born on another planet or created in a lab somewhere. I mean, I didn’t always live in Nibelheim—”

“Nibelheim isn’t your hometown?” In a burst of surprise, she motioned for him to quiet himself after he blurted out her “secret”. Her older self found the act foolish, considering how little anyone cared about her in her earlier days. Why would they care about some Shinra pawn being born somewhere else? Then her annoyance waned when she remembered that—

“No…My mother said I shouldn’t tell anyone.”

Zack slouched, pouting out of confused concern. “Why, though? Are you _sure_ you’re not some kind of government secret?”

“Positive.”

“That’s such an odd thing for your mom to be weird about. Maybe you should talk with her later?”

“I might. Who knows, I also might be able to figure out where I actually came from…”

“You don’t know where you _came_ from, either? Man, I think you and Sephiroth should talk, too. You guys have a lot more in common than I thought.”

To hear that, from _Zack_ , of all people…

It hurt so much.

Cloud wanted to belong, though she didn’t know how she could. The other kids could go out whenever they wanted. She could only go out when her mother thought it was safe. The other kids could play the roughest, toughest games, and even do roughhousing. She was told such things were far too dangerous for her fragile bones. The other kids had friends and family they could always rely on. She only had her mother, and everyone else in Nibelheim was afraid of her. The other kids had everything she wanted. She only had her mother.

She was merely nine, and already she found herself resenting her place in the world. Why did she exist if everything seemed to hate her so much? What did she do _wrong_?

She brought her only friend closer to her heart—a tattered, raggedy chocobo doll that was older than she was. As tears fell onto its face, she curled into a ball under her bedsheets and cried out for the one person who loved her.

She eventually came, cradling her gently in her warm, strong arms, her soft clothes providing an extra comfort she didn’t know she needed, but she didn’t know if her mother was supposed to have blonde or bright white hair…

“You must be pretty tired, huh?”

She said nothing, merely clinging to one of her mother’s arms. Her free hand held tightly onto her chocobo doll, watching as its patchwork body bounced and dangled in the air in sync with the train’s rolling wheels. She clung harder whenever the train hit a particularly rough bump.

Stroking her head (which was so nice), she continued, “I still can’t believe this is happening…Everything is going to change because of…because of what I chose. It’s so exciting and yet…I’m scared. I don’t know if I chose the right ‘thing’, I don’t know how much I’ll have to pay for doing something like this—I just don’t know. That fear of the unknown…”

Cloud was trying to listen, even while exhaustion threatened to drag her into her subconscious. She didn’t really know why she was so exhausted in the first place; someone her age shouldn’t have been this tired.

“And you, you poor thing…I want your life to be better than what you would’ve had. What they were planning for you, oh, I couldn’t imagine how much they would hurt you. Hurting a five year old—ridiculous! And they’ve already done it before and look how _he_ turned out!

You would’ve ended up the same way if I didn’t get us out of there.”

Cloud woke up, trapped in a room she didn’t recognize.

It was sterile, its white walls bright enough to hurt her delicate eyes, as did the overhead lights. She faced away from the ceiling and shifted her focus onto her off-white bed, noting how difficult it was to move her neck, drawing her knees closer to her chest, only to notice she was naked. Countless wires and tubes funneled into her weirdly tiny form, and the only thing to cover her was a white sheet, which was not thick enough to insulate her. There was also a glass cover of some sort above her, with holes in both the left and right sides for the tubing to escape.

She was in an incubator. When she lifted her head up as high as she could before her neck muscles gave in, she saw that the room was filled with incubators just like hers. There was no way of knowing if they were “occupied”, however.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?”

She froze. That had to be…Hojo.

“Wrong one, professor.” What was she doing here? What was she doing with him? “This is the one I’m working on.”

Two large figures suddenly loomed over her glass case, staring down at her and scrutinizing her. A younger Hojo was indeed one of the speakers, and the other one…Her face was instantly recognizable, but Cloud didn’t want to believe it was her.

Hojo twisted his face into a sneer. “A runt? You wanted to show me a runt?”

“She is not a runt. All the others that survived are her size, so it has nothing to do with her. I suspect that the last two batches of DNA samples were rife with deleterious mutations. We had to purge many embryos…”

“If that’s the case…then what is your reasoning for showing me this one in particular?” His voice was taut.

“I’ve mapped out her and the others’ entire genomes over the past few weeks. In comparison to the others that are in here, her genes carry the least amount of deleterious mutations, barring the harmless genes that could eventually lead to later complications. Meaning that, of all the ones that are most likely to survive their first few years of life…”

She flinched when he scowled at her. “You mean this pathetic thing is the best you can offer the president? He is going to be very disappointed in you, especially considering how much money he has spent on this damn project of yours. I won’t be surprised when you mysteriously disappear in a few weeks or so.”

The woman momentarily stood in silence, unfazed. While her eyes were obscured by her glasses, Cloud could sense the hate burning within them.

“You’re just afraid of the fact that I’m your competition. You didn’t go around saying this sort of garbage to Lucrecia, did you?”

She had struck a nerve—his scowl was deepening by the second. “Even when she is dead you hide behind her! You really have no shame, do you?”

The woman was no longer paying attention, instead looking at something Cloud couldn’t see. When she glanced back, she said, “We have to leave. You’re free to continue whining once we’re out of here, but I’m due for a meeting in a half-hour or so. On the eighty-fifth floor. We’re currently on the seventy-fifth floor. Surely you have more important matters to attend to, as well?”

Hojo had already moved out of sight, and it sounded as if he was by the exit. “I hate to admit it, but you're not wrong. Regardless, though, of whether or not we’ll get to our meetings in time…You’ll have to watch out for your title. I doubt I’ll have to keep referring to you as ‘Professor Strife’ for much longer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cloud MIGHT need some help  
> maybe. just a lil.


	7. The Beginning of the End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ack super sorry for the late update!! i got caught up in something
> 
> well, whoever's still waiting for an update, i hope you enjoy

“Your mother was a Shinra scientist?” Tifa said in disbelief, her eyes wide. “Did you just find out?”

Cloud lowered her head, focusing her gaze on the few, squat stairs that lead up to Tifa’s bar. Age had made cracks grow deeper into the wood. Cobwebs she didn’t recall seeing last time bridged the crack’s gaps.

“I think so. I mean, if you count a dream as a revelation.”

Tifa suddenly seemed less interested. “Oh. Well, that’s just a dream, and they’re not really meant to be taken seriously.”

“You’re not wrong, but…”

“I wouldn’t worry about them. After all, you’ve got yourself busy again with your delivery service.” Her low voice suggested her disapproval of such things; she must’ve thought that Cloud was still too ill to function. “You know, putting too much weight on things like that will just make you feel sicker. No wonder you’re so anxious all the time…”

Maybe Tifa was right. Maybe she wasn’t. Who could say for sure? She couldn’t trust anyone’s judgement pertaining to her, and she couldn’t trust herself. She wondered how much Tifa really trusted _her_ , regarding the fact that only as of today she had apologized for what she said weeks ago. She accepted the apology, though Cloud couldn’t tell if the acceptance came reluctantly.

“There’s something else on your mind, isn’t there? It’s alright to tell me.”

Cloud grimaced. How’d she know? “No, no, I’m fine. I don’t need to saddle you with anything else.”

“Cloud, _please_ don’t lie to me.”

“It’s just…I can’t get him out of my mind. No matter what I do, he’s always there in the corner of my eyes, waiting for me, watching me. And I’m starting to fear that I’m becoming him.” No point in hiding when she was already caught.

“So that’s what it is?” Her eyes flickered with the spark of recognition, the relief of understanding something she was never sure about. “You really think you’ll end up…?”

“It’s pretty likely. These dreams have been drawing parallels between me and him, and I keep going back to old memories that make me feel worse. It’s getting harder to be me—I’m forgetting what I’m supposed to be like—how do you fix that? I’m terrified that any day now, that what’s left of me is going to be consumed by the remnants of him because of what I am…Tifa, you don’t think that’ll happen, do you?”

“Why would it?” If only she was as confident as Tifa was. “You’re probably overthinking things.”

She was quiet for a while, unsure of how to refute her. How could she, really?

“Well…I have to check on Marlene soon. Feel free to stay as long as you like—I’ll be downstairs with her.”

“Wait, where’s Barret?”

Tifa sighed and set her eyes on the ground. “Barret…Ever since that geostigma disease broke out, he’s been constantly trying to figure out Shinra’s connections to it. I keep telling him that it’s not a good idea, pointing out how reckless he’s gotten, but you know how he is.” She laughed awkwardly, a smile flashing across her pale face before it reverted into a flat line. In her red irises, Cloud saw a little bit of herself, with that same glint of absolute hopelessness deep within, that pain, that existential dread that leeched off their consciousnesses. “He doesn’t listen. Marlene doesn’t listen. No one listens to me…”

Before Cloud could stop her, she hurried back into the bar.

Something in Cloud made her want to contract geostigma.

The compulsion developed somewhat sporadically, emerging from the depths of her mind as she watched a conspiratorial show about efforts to produce human-chocobo hybrids. The show itself was utter nonsense, relying on vague connections and impossible pseudo-science, making it perfect for background noise (and also perfect for warding off voices) as she mulled over the day in her apartment.

She hadn’t seen many cases, even with the realization that more and more of her deliveries were winding up in the epicenter—Midgar—but the ones she did stumble across only roused more concerns about herself. Early geostigma appeared to manifest as an inflamed, purplish rash somewhere on their bodies, while later stages evolved into thick, breathing slime in the midst of devouring the sufferers. As if it were alive, it would slither about for a few seconds whenever it dripped onto the ground or onto clothing, only to “die” a minute later. Flesh being consumed by it would curl, become infected, like the slime had corrosive properties. Bone underneath rotting tissue wouldn’t be seen, as the slime seemed to eat through it.

More frightening were the _implications_ brought on by the disease. If it reached the eyes, the irises would mutate into a vivid green color and the pupils would contract, turning cat-like. If it reached the mouth, the teeth would sharpen monstrously, inhumanely. If it reached the hands, the skin would necrose, while the nails darkened and terminated into deathly talons. The sufferer’s hair would never not be long and silver, usually having been morphed over the course of a handful of weeks.

These mutations spelled out something for Cloud that, evidently, no one else realized. The talons, the fangs, the green eyes…Her hair and skin were still intact for now.

She wondered if it was simply a matter of time before she succumbed to the insanity that plagued late-stage victims. It was debatable if she was _already_ teetering on the border of irrationality, and in spite of the fact that she didn’t have the telltale rash, she feared for what geostigma truly meant for her.

Within fear lay the gnarled form of curiosity. Once the question came into being, it latched onto her brain, refusing to let go no matter how far she pushed it away. A thrill she hadn’t felt in a long time seized her heart every time she allowed herself to ask it: how would geostigma affect her?

Laying in bed was the closest approximation Cloud could get to sleeping.

She didn’t want to be awake—exhaustion gnawed at her muscles, her head constantly swam with nausea, and her vision blurred with every heartbeat; sleep was her only relief from such torture. Figured as much that what she needed most wasn’t something she’d have.

To occupy herself (perhaps in the hopes of eventually lulling herself to sleep), she touched upon an unspoken discomfort she sensed from being at Seventh Heaven. Barret and Tifa…what was going on with them? What was going on with Marlene? She had yet to see him in person, and with Marlene, she only caught her in a couple of glimpses at a time. Tifa’s appearance troubled her the most. Never had she seen anyone degrade so rapidly, so severely in such a short amount of time. Cloud knew she looked awful and had stopped caring about her appearance long ago, but she didn’t know what happened to Tifa to leave her disheveled.

It wasn’t like she’d spill the information, either—Tifa suppressed her feelings harder than she did. It wouldn’t matter how she asked. All nothing answers and avoidant gazes, anything to hide her pain. Cloud was a fool for thinking that her heart would ever open up, a fool for thinking that even after everything they had gone through together, she would feel comfortable discussing her own dilemmas. Tifa was the one who would keep smiling no matter what, even if she was being plunged into a pit of lava. She’d kill herself if it meant someone else could live. In fact, she had often attempted to do so when Sephiroth was still alive, and no matter what someone said as they held her back, she gave flimsy excuses to persist in her recklessness.

If Tifa did ever manage to end her life, she didn’t know if she’d learn to cope. She was the last surviving memory of her hometown and her mental anchor; if it wasn’t for her when she was poisoned, if it wasn’t for her when Sephiroth tried to rend her mind from her body, if it wasn’t for her in her darkest hours…

She needed to return the favor.

In the morning, she decided, she’d seek her out. She didn’t know what she’d do when she reached her, but she knew she had to do something.

“You really came at a bad time, Cloud.”

Tifa kept trying to force a smile, although each one eventually broke down into a blank expression; when she buried her face in her hands, Cloud presumed it was to hide her struggling.

“Why’d you come back, anyway? It’s not like you’re needed here or anything…”

“‘Cause I was worried about you? Is that really difficult to believe?”

“I just thought…you had better things to do.”

“The deliveries can wait.” Tifa peered at her through one of the spaces between her fingers. Something like a flicker of a cruel grin might’ve been seen as well.

“I let something slip then, didn’t I? What did I say?”

“It’s not what you’ve said. It’s…more general. And it looks like it’s been going on for a long time.” She seated herself on the barstool across from Tifa's spot behind the bar, dreading what her response would be. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

“There’s nothing you need to know. Just the usual happenings, that’s all.”

Cloud narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”

She was quiet, momentarily. Right when she was about to say something, she closed her mouth again and hid more of her face.

“Come on—you were there for me, so why can’t I be there for you?” She didn’t intend to say _that_ , but that was what she said. She couldn’t go back now.

“I don’t need help, Cloud. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I’m just a little…”

“A little what?”

“Just a little…” Her voice trailed off, and she started trembling. “Sad. Yes, that’s what it is. Sadness. It’ll be over soon, I’m sure. You don’t need to be…here for me…” At that she broke down, ducking behind the bar before Cloud could reach out. “Go away! I don’t want you to see me like this!”

“Wait, Tifa—”

She then slid under the bar once Cloud entered her space. “I don’t want you to worry about me—just forget about what you’re seeing and leave!”

“Tifa—”

“It’s my own stupid fault, anyway—I’ve been overthinking things and I can’t—I simply can’t imagine myself being happy in this hellhole, I can’t see how anyone can live in this hellhole, I can’t see why anyone would want to be alive today, nothing’s improving—everything’s getting worse, we should’ve just let him—we should’ve just let him destroy…” Her slurred speech escalated into one pained wail as she clutched her head, her body condensing more and more. She latched onto Cloud the moment she came to her side, disregarding any notion of personal space as she continued rambling. “I hate this! I hate everything! Killing Sephiroth did absolutely nothing—the planet’s still dying, Shinra’s still here, every person we knew is mostly gone—Cloud, I’m…I’m scared. I don’t want to die but I don’t want to live, either…”

Alarmed at her words, Cloud did the only thing she knew in moments like these. She embraced her, holding her as she sobbed into her shoulder, saying nothing as time stilled. It was the two of them, alone together in the great nothingness of misery. Tifa’s desperate claws into her back reminded her that she wasn’t the only one aching, that everyone needed help that couldn’t be provided.

She soon started crying herself.

The brunette didn’t budge from her spot in the front doorway. She studied Cloud from head to toe a couple of times while her small mouth curved into a frown. Some sort of groaning behind her could be heard with long pauses between each groan. The groans sounded eerily familiar, though Cloud was hesitant to draw any connections to _them_ just yet.

“Oh, so you’re…You’re a lot more sickly looking than I thought you’d be.”

It took her a few seconds to respond properly, as what had happened with Tifa a few hours earlier ate at the back of her mind. “Thanks.” She offered the package, and the woman took it rather quickly. Her large blue eyes, glossy behind her thick spectacles, harbored a fear that irked her, like the woman was gazing upon some sort of wretched beast.

“You know, I heard that AVALANCHE broke up years ago. Is that true? Or was that something that Shinra made up?”

“Something Shinra cooked up.” Cloud didn’t feel like risking an honest answer. Most people in Sector 2 were notorious for being the corporation’s bootlickers, and she was already stirring up enough trouble just by agreeing to deliver here.

The woman bit her lip when the distant moans commenced once more, piercing the walls of the apartment building as they did so. “I know it sounds bad, but my friend…She’s infected, and she just keeps getting worse, no matter what I do to help her. No one knows how to treat geostigma, and I—I’m afraid she’s going to die.”

Past her shoulders Cloud spotted her friend, and chills shot down her body. The condensed, shuddering form of someone wrapped in a dark cloak, that unmistakable sight…A clone. Logically that wasn’t possible, but the similarities were enough to send her mind into overdrive. She wouldn’t tell the woman about it, of course, but to see more of her horrible past…She couldn't bear it. She needed to get away.

“I can’t help you—I don’t really understand the disease myself. Sorry.” She turned around to head toward Fenrir, only to stop when the woman started mumbling something.

“I’m going to be next, aren’t I? We’ll all succumb to it and it’ll be too late to do anything…It’s Shinra’s doing and no one bothers to hear me out…”

Geostigma being one of Shinra’s “products” wouldn’t surprise her, if the rumors turned out true. She simply didn’t understand why they’d create it, and Barret’s arguments weren’t convincing her in the slightest.

She figured that the man most obsessed with Shinra's doings would have the answers (why else would she seek him out to discuss such a topic?). As it turned out…

“You’re not answering my question,” she said, kicking her feet up against the bar to lean back. After folding her arms behind her back, she added, “Why would Shinra create a disease that makes you go insane? How does that benefit them?”

He grunted and turned around, his barstool creaking under his weight. “You know what? Forget it. You’re not gonna believe it ‘til you see it, huh?”

“ _Sorry_. It’s hard to believe in anything these days.” She thought back to the dreams she had had over the last week. Like most of them, they were tapping into her deepest insecurities, though their overtness was completely new. Blending nightmare and memory, it seemed, to imply that she was more like Sephiroth than she should’ve been. Like she was a sleeper agent of some sort, waiting for her trigger to become his replacement.

“Jenova’s making a comeback.”

“What?”

She jerked her head toward him as he lowered his head in thought. “Yeah. They’re building that bitch back up again and there’s no sign of their progress slowin’ down. I swear, it’s really like Tifa said…”

A chill descended upon them. She knew they were trying to recreate her, but she assumed that their efforts would ultimately end up in failure or disaster. Not perfection. Suddenly, her throat was a lot drier.

“What’re they planning?”

“Can’t say. For all I know, they might be looking to use her as some sort of doomsday weapon. But that’s just me guessing.” He glanced at her. “Unless you have any ideas?”

“No. I’ve seen her in their headquarters, I thought there wasn’t a chance they’d be getting anywhere with their new project. Had I known…I would’ve destroyed her then.”

“You’ve seen her yourself? How the hell did you know she was there if their project was in the early stages?”

She froze. She hadn’t paid much thought to it before, yet now that he brought it up, the coincidental nature of her stop by Shinra was too perfect.

“It’s those damn J-cells of yours, isn’t it? They’re probably going nuts all the time because she’s still out there!”

“That…” It made a lot of sense. She found herself petrified, speechless, the sweat on her brow more noticeable thanks to Barret’s gaze intensifying on her.

“Cloud, you need to be careful. Shinra knows full n’ well that you’re carrying fragments of her inside you—and she’s not complete. Which means—”

She understood. “I’m a target.” _That’s why Elena…_

They were silent for a long time. Seventh Heaven felt a lot tighter than before, more stifling, leaving Cloud discomforted. Her rib cage was closing in on her heart and lungs.

“I dunno. You might need to go into hiding soon, depending on Shinra’s whims.” There was pain in his eyes as he spoke. “You need to protect yourself.”

“Where would I go?”

“I can’t help you there. I don’t even think I could if I wanted to.” He grew quiet after speaking, hanging his head as if he had told her his horrible secret.

“Barret?” Help was what she wanted the most at the moment. She wanted to beg him, to plead with him, to tell him so badly that she didn’t know how to help herself—and yet she didn’t.

When he turned to her after a long pause, he said, voice strained, “We’re in awful shape, aren’t we? AVALANCHE doesn’t exist anymore, Shinra’s back, Jenova’s back, the planet’s dying—again, everyone I know is fallin’ apart…” He shook his head, then slammed his fist on the bar’s surface and hung his head. “Dammit! We fought for nothing! We’re worse off than before! And I bet we’ll be expected to save the planet again, fuckin’ hell…”

In the wake of Barret’s crushing words, Cloud recalled an old thought, defeatism perverting her rationale as she savored it again: perhaps letting the world end a second time wasn’t such a bad idea. There was far too much despair plaguing the earth, from the strangers she’d deliver to every day to the people she held dearest to her cold heart. Misery and suffering with no end in sight, how…meaningless. All this pain that will be felt by nothing beyond the dead void of the sky, all of it…

If only she could change any of it.

Cloud couldn’t let go of the feeling that someone was in her apartment. After everything she had gone through today, her nerves were overwrought like the rest of her; and as much as she wanted to sleep, she feared that if she did, she’d never see the light of day again. Quick to get to her feet, she ensured she didn’t make any sound as she got out of bed and crept toward her bedroom door. Listening carefully for a few minutes didn’t warrant anything concerning.

She opened the door slightly and peered out the crevice, scanning every slight shape leaning against the night’s darkness. Again, nothing unusual. She sneaked out into the hallway and turned on the lights, as weak as they were, then followed the outline of the kitchen’s archway. She was about to reach the living room—

Then she saw him.

He was waiting for her, occupying her seat near the television. Masamune was nowhere to be seen—thank the gods for that—but that didn’t alleviate any tension. If he desired it, he could’ve snapped her neck in a second; or, if he was feeling particularly lazy, he’d make her snap her own neck. Panic compelled her to duck behind the kitchen countertop (and even if she did have one of her swords with her, she doubted she’d have the will to fight in that instance).

“Impossible,” she said upon concluding his presence possibly wasn’t just another one of her delusions. “You’re not real.”

“If you insist, Cloud.” Too bad it was still dark out, she wanted to get a better look at him. From her new position, she could make out his general form and his piercing green eyes. And that was it, even with her sight being superior to normal people’s. “I will say, I’m rather disappointed that you haven’t learned anything since all those years ago. Are you really that useless without my guidance?”

 _Guidance?_ “Shut up. I want to know why you’re here.”

He had a laugh, then stood up. All the muscles in her body tightened. She was in no capacity to fight for her life, and perhaps she wanted him to finally kill her—no, no, no, that was wrong. Why would she think such things?

“You think it’s for revenge, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

As he began to advance toward her, the smile on his face twisted into a smirk. One that made her squirm. Her nostrils started to burn with a putrid-sweet rot. “I am no longer interested in avenging my death. Rather, I’m interested in what you could do for me.”

She didn’t say anything. She wanted to bolt, to get away from him, and yet…

“I didn’t see it back then. I had dismissed you as a mere tool, something disposable, but I understand you better now…You’re something else entirely.”

“What…what are you saying?” By now he was within strangling range, and she was pressing herself against the wall, only noticing at the last minute that she had trapped herself. Of course. Hairs on the nape of her neck stuck up when something started to wrap itself around her lungs—the immutable stench of ancient death. It was overwhelming, dizzying, intoxicating…Why did he _smell_ like that? 

“Isn’t it obvious? Your power, your potential—I want to use it.”

“For what?”

His smirk deepened. The air surrounding them was thick and heavy. She repressed every urge to vomit and hoped that the tears in her burning eyes wouldn’t spill, while his gaze searched every inch of her being.

“What the hell do you want from me?”

“You…” He put his hands on her shoulders, and she turned to ice. She couldn’t look at anything beyond his slit pupils. “You are exactly what this planet needs. A _savior_.”

Sephiroth’s eyes weren’t green after she blinked. They were bright red.

“No need to look so scared, Cloud… 

“Mother will be your mentor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew i hope this chapter doesn’t turn some people off :P  
> also apologies if this chapter seems "choppy" in comparison to the others, the next chapter will be much nicer


	8. Mutation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phew sorry i'm late again. shout outs to y'all who are still here despite my bs!!  
> this one gets a lil weird. it’s a lil slow, too. i promise you, though, this is all building up to something  
> i hope you still manage to enjoy

_The time has come. You must fulfill…your purpose…_

She woke up in her bed, like nothing was wrong. Immediately, she got out of her room, and searched the rest of her apartment to see if he had left behind any indication of his visit.

Nothing.

Her throat tightened. Surely she wasn’t hallucinating the whole time. He must’ve done something, either to her or her home, he must’ve been real…She stopped when she came near the kitchen countertop. Something like a cruel smile stretched across her face as she lowered her head; it figured as much that she couldn’t distinguish what was real from what wasn’t. For all she knew, everything since last morning could’ve been an elaborate mind trick.

That’s how she operated ever since Zack broke her out of the labs. She couldn’t trust anything or anyone entirely in fear of learning that they were merely fabricated products of her diseased mind’s misfirings—in fear of losing the only people that tolerated her presence, in fear of realizing that her own hallucinations didn’t seem to fully accept her.

She made her way to the window behind her television and opened the blinds. The night’s darkness was giving way to a faint, barely palpable violet-orange gradient, and if it weren’t for Midgar’s perpetually bleak sky, she imagined she’d soon start feeling the sun’s rays. And even there, as she watched the inhabitants below her bustle about in an imitation of normality, a voice in the cold reaches of her mind told her, “This isn’t real.”

 _Nothing in your world is real._ She dismissed the voice as quickly as she could. She didn’t even recognize it—it didn’t sound like him, but it didn’t sound like herself, either. It was a woman’s voice, one that, if she had a normal, functioning brain, she’d know. Her name was right there, though the further she tried to reach for it, the further away her name became.

No matter. The woman was probably an _actual_ hallucination, and if she wasted any more thought on her she’d tire herself. Speaking of which…

She needed more rest. She wasn’t exactly feeling great (and that headache, while at its calmest at the moment, was still there), she wasn’t thinking straight, and she knew she wasn’t a morning person. If the nightmares reappeared, she hoped she’d forget about them when she stirred once again.

Or memories, whichever came first.

When she felt herself stir, she opened her eyes to find herself in Zack’s home. She was in her old foot soldier uniform, sitting in the living room with him while his mother prepped for dinner. His father, like always, was nowhere to be seen.

“…I wish he wasn’t so busy all the time,” Zack was apparently saying, pouting. “I mean, it’s great that he has a job ‘n all, but man, there’s just something about having the whole family together when you’re home.” She had made a face without thinking, and he then looked to her. “Oh, I didn’t—no offense to you, buddy! I mean, you don’t need to answer if you’re uncomfortable, but…did you ever meet your father?”

She shook her head.

“Wow. So you don’t even know who he is, huh? Does that bother you at all?”

“I mean…I’d just like to know who he was and if he was anyone important. Y’know, for closure. Otherwise, I don’t really care. I’ve never really felt like I was ‘missing’ someone in my life. Mom’s pretty good to me.”

He seemed satisfied with her answer. A few minutes passed between them before he spoke up again. “Sephiroth…I think he questions his origins a lot. He’s never said anything outright, of course, but boy does he like to ask me about _my_ parents. Nothing particularly weird or unsettling about his questions, though he looks like he’s taking notes of my responses in his head. Hey, between you and me…” They exchanged looks. “He probably fantasizes about having a family when he goes to bed.”

“Well, can you blame him? If I was Sephiroth, I’d probably do the same thing.” She paused, reflecting on how differently her life would be like if she took on his role. Something about the abject loneliness he partook in deeply unnerved her. “In fact, when you think about it, he really doesn’t have much of anything. I don’t even know if he has a house.”

“That’s true! Maybe I should ask him next time I see ‘em. Speaking of which, we’ve been talking a lot more since there’s been some serious tension amongst everyone due to a recent development…”

“Which is what?”

“You ever hear of Project S-2?”

A pit formed in the bottom of her stomach. “What’s…what’s that, Zack?”

“Sephiroth and I have talked about it before. Rumor has it that Shinra has tried to clone Sephiroth for…uh, well, I don’t know, really. Their own purposes, I guess. Some dudes have said that they were cloning him in the hopes of creating someone even more powerful than him. Others were saying that they were preparing backup copies of him in case something ever happened to him. Frankly, I feel it’s a lotta nonsense. And he does, too.”

 _Someone more powerful than Sephiroth? How is that possible?_ Her chest grew tight, despite sensing that she was overreacting. _That name sounds familiar, too…_

“Man, you look pretty spooked! You shouldn’t worry, the whole idea’s most likely a bunch of conspiracy garbage. People get funny like that when it comes to Shinra.” Zack offered her a goofy smile, and she started to feel better again. Still, that dread that had suddenly crept up on her lingered—she couldn’t let go of the idea of “Project S-2” being a legitimate series of experiments that were kept secret from everyone, including most of Shinra’s elite. With no indication of where the rumors began, the person who spread them in the first place might’ve been a whistleblower.

“People also think Hojo and the President are developing a hatred for each other. ‘Cause Hojo’s been startin’ a bunch of unauthorized projects for himself, sapping Shinra’s budget, and no one knows where the money’s even going, so he’s gonna be fired soon—or at least, they’re hoping. That rumor’s probably true, considering how creepy that guy is…man, imagine having Hojo as your dad! That’s quite a scary thought, huh?”

“Yeah…” The Hojo mention got her thinking. A lot of her peers liked to insult her by insinuating her father was him, and they always said that he was incapable of maintaining relationships, bailing out whenever a child was on the way…It was _probably_ impossible, but what if there was a chance he was…

“You alright? You’re starting to look sick again.”

“Oh—I, I’m fine, I promise.”

“You’ve been acting funny a lot lately. Something wrong?”

Now she was getting nervous. “Have I? Because…I feel fine…”

“And you look horrible, too.”

“Huh?”

When she turned to him, he was gone. “Zack?”

“You shouldn’t even be alive. I’m ashamed of you.”

“Mom?” She turned to her left, only to be met with the cold void of nothingness. “What? What’s going on? What is this?”

Something shifted under her feet. More void.

“Why are you still here? You should just—”

“Tifa? I should just _what_?” She stood up, and whatever was left of her illusory world fell apart. “That wasn’t really you…Was it?”

“No one would care if you died. You’re nothing to everyone.”

“Who are you?”

No response. It was just her and the darkness.

“Hello?”

She wandered around for a while—to her amazement, as there appeared to be nothing supporting her weight. Nothing, nothing everywhere. The horror that had gripped her a few moments ago lapsed into emotional numbness, and sudden exhaustion dragged her to her knees.

“I don’t understand any of this. Why is this even happening?”

She hung her head.

_Do you feel it?_

That woman from before…Why was she in her mind? What was she even talking about?

_Deep within…You are changing. Your heart is empty and you are losing yourself. You are…afraid of these facts, are you not?_

Something was hurting her stomach. Something was _moving_ in her stomach.

_You should not be afraid. You should be glad. You are going to be beautiful._

Her muscles were throbbing. Pain flooded her nerves. Her organs were rearranging themselves. She wanted to cry, everything was hurting so bad, but…

Her spine snapped into two, bone fragments piercing the surrounding tissue, while the skin on her back began to peel away. Her fingers cracked into the wrong angles, as did her toes, allowing the flesh inside to calcify and sharpen into new claws. Meat-like tentacles burst out from underneath her shoulder blades, and it wasn’t much longer before her teeth shredded through her mouth.

_You will be my living legacy._

She lost herself.

Cloud woke up.

“Not again,” she said to herself, then stretched and rubbed her eyes. It was dark outside. She started to wonder how long she had slept, suspecting that her lengthy rest contributed to the feverish nature of her dreams. They were usually feverish, though this recent batch was egregiously delirious.

They all felt like they were designed to eat at her insecurities, but there was always an uncertain feeling that they weren’t offshoots of her thoughts, like someone else was creating them. It didn’t make much sense when she put it into that perspective, however…

She’d think about it later. She needed more sleep—proper sleep, anyway. Dwelling would keep her awake, which wasn’t what she needed right now.

The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes again was Mother’s smile.

She really shouldn’t have gone to the bar. She didn’t even know why she went—in the hopes of assuaging her fears regarding her dreams, perhaps—but regret was rapidly setting in; their conversation was going nowhere, and she was once again being reprimanded for ignoring the spread of disease. Tifa had been especially vocal about that issue as of late.

“I’m starting to think that maybe you should put your delivery service on hold.” Tifa stopped momentarily when Cloud glared at her, sinking a little more behind the bar. “Geostigma is spreading! I don’t want you to get sick, too…I’m already sick from worrying about Barret all the time. If either of you contract it, I don’t know what I’ll do…”

“She’s right, you know. I can attest to what’s happenin’ in Midgar. If you keep going in there, it’s simply a matter of time before that damn disease gets you. And with no hopes of a cure, well…” Barret, who was leaning against the wall next to her, closed his eyes in thought. “Honestly? I never understood why you even bothered with the service in the first place. People are such a pain to deal with.”

Tifa nodded solemnly. “It really is a thankless job. If I were you, I would’ve stopped a long time ago. Just don’t have the energy to put up with that kind of stuff anymore.”

“It’s not like I don’t care about these sorts of things,” she said, perhaps a tad too defensively. “But without the service, I don’t have much to do. Most of us don’t. And I like to be busy.”

“Sure, sure. Look at me—I just spend most of my days sleeping now. All the regulars I used to have aren’t around anymore, and most people today don’t even know this place exists.”

“You really should advertise more, Tifa. I keep tellin’ you that and you don’t do anything!”

“Barret, where the hell am I going to advertise? In the vast stretches of nothing that are everywhere?” Now the two of them were bickering. Cloud sighed and waited for them to be done.

“I don’t know—I just figured that we could do _something_ with our lives instead of moping about all the time.”

“Pretty hard to do that when everything’s come to a halt. Who knows, maybe the planet’s still dying, too. No point in doing anything when that’s happening…”

She tuned them out, finding herself returning to her dreams. Surely they meant something? Or was it his way of communicating to her? Constantly feeding her these vaguely coherent scenarios laced with subliminal messaging, in the hopes of what, exactly? Maybe he was trying to push her past the brink of insanity, making her suffer a fate like his, which would inevitably lead her to be his replacement? What other reason could he possibly have if he was responsible for them…

“What’s bothering you this time, Cloud?” She looked up at the sound of Tifa’s voice, a little spooked to see the two of them staring her down.

“It’s those…I’m having weird dreams again.”

“Oh, no, seriously?” Barret seemed positively horrified. “Man, the last time that happened—”

“Was when Sephiroth was still alive, I know, I know. But he isn’t around anymore. At least, I don’t think he is.”

“Could it be Jenova somehow influencing you? I haven’t got a clue as to what else could be goin’ on with you.”

“I thought Jenova wasn’t even sentient?” Tifa said. “Those voices and hallucinations were Sephiroth’s work, weren’t they? Because if she was capable of thought, that would mean he…was being manipulated too, to some extent, right?”

“There’s a good chance that Shinra mischaracterized that bitch. Most of their ‘scientists’ were the bottom of the barrel in comparison to their peers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they got a lotta things wrong about her. Hell, if Shera’s research is anything to go by…”

There came a long pause. Uncertainty was thick in the air.

“We’re really not going anywhere with this conversation. Listen, Cloud,” she then said, facing her, “I’m sorry about this, I’m sure you wanted some answers to what’s happening with you. How about you just let either of us know if you start feeling worse? I’m not sure what we can do if that happens, but we’ll try to help as best we can. Does that sound alright?”

Her organs started to itch, and distrust settled within her. “I…guess so. I just hope you’re not making an empty promise.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the three of them, and without anything else to be added, Cloud left shortly afterward, frustrated.

Another day, another handful of deliveries. She understood that with every package she handed out came a greater risk of getting geostigma, but she couldn’t find it within herself to worry. She should’ve told Barret and Tifa why she kept risking her health (or whatever was left of it), while also ignoring her subconscious desire to fall ill; the monotonous nature of her service provided her some structure and stability in her life. Without it, she wouldn’t be doing anything. And she needed to keep herself busy, to keep herself preoccupied, because otherwise…the pain, the voices, the nightmares…If she wasn’t doing _something_ to distract herself, to make herself feel alive, she suspected that she wouldn’t force herself to live for much longer.

The lure of death was always tempting her. On the days she didn’t have to make deliveries, she’d lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling with all its water spots and grime, contemplating how valuable her life really was. And that was if the hallucinations weren’t tearing up her state of mind.

She put a stop to that line of thinking as her destination, Rocket Town, came into view. She couldn't remember the last time she had been here, but she certainly knew that Cid was still living here. If she had the address right, he wanted her to deliver him a bunch of mechanical parts. What would he do with them? Didn’t know, didn’t care. She was more preoccupied with how he was going to talk to her, anyway. Their staggered interactions over the years hadn’t improved much from the time AVALANCHE existed, so she didn’t have much hope for today. Fenrir was strategically parked near the front of his home in case the situation went south, so she sucked in a breath, braced herself for the worst and knocked three times on his door.

The door opened slightly, and a pair of weathered eyes glowered at her. She was surprised to not see a fat cigar jutting out from his gnashed teeth. “You look like shit, Cloud.”

“Just take it,” she said, forcing the package through the door’s crevice. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Mind tellin’ me what the hell’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Yeah, I know they’re messed up. They’ve been like that for a while now.”

“Heh, it’s just like I was tryin’ to tell everyone back then…you’re growin’ into his spittin’ image. We’re screwed.”

Rage burned in her heart; it took a lot of restraint for her to not just lash out at the bastard. “How do you know that? Sephiroth and I are nothing alike.”

They stared at each other for a moment, the silent hostility between the two of them swelling with every passing minute. “C’mere, real quick. I wanna get a good look at you inside.” He beckoned her, opening the door all the way as if that would motivate her.

“Why? So you can berate me even more?”

Cid wasn’t amused, and the grim expression he assumed troubled her immensely. “I’m serious. There’s something on your head that’s buggin’ me. Maybe it’s the shitty sky out here that’s fuckin’ with my vision, but if that’s not the case…It’ll just be for a minute or two, and then you can leave and hate me all you want.”

“My…head?”

“Let’s go, girlie. Dawdlin’ is not going to help either of us.”

“ _Fine_.”

She reluctantly complied, taking in the absolute chaos that engulfed Cid’s place as she stepped inside. Confusing charts, diagrams, broken and stranded mechanical parts, and half-finished, sloppily-built machines covered every inch of his interiors. It stank of oil and grease and sweat, too, and her sensitivity to such smells made her retch. Her boots squeaked from the slicking of such fluids whenever she wasn’t stepping over some sort of pipe. Shera had the right idea to leave him all those years ago…

They stopped near the right side of his place, close to a window, where a bunch of tiny model rockets were collecting into a heap underneath it. They smelled burnt.

He eyed her for an uncomfortable amount of time before he spoke up again, scowling.

“You’ve grown. You weren’t this tall when Meteor was still loomin’ in the air…” He drew close to her, and she then saw what he was talking about. Her eye level brushed past the top of his head. “I know I’ve got shit posture, but that doesn’t explain the height difference. Why’s your body decidin’ to undergo a goddamn growth spurt now? Grown-ass adults don’t go through that.”

“I don’t know.” How’d she not notice that? Her clothes still fit rather nicely on her body, though the constant aches in her joints and muscles would explain a lot. Did anyone else notice?

“Your hair, too. There’s something in it that…Don’t move…” He reached for her head, only to rip out a handful of hair strands afterward to study them.

“Ow! Cid, what the f—”

“I didn’t know you liked puttin’ silver streaks in your hair.”

“What? Wait, hold on—”

“Or…you’re greyin’ already? That can’t be right.” They both scrutinized the hair in his hand. Long and silvery. Just like…

His. She felt lightheaded.

Cid glanced up at her. “So you are really becoming—”

“I’m leaving.”

And that was that.

Cloud couldn’t think much of anything as she seated herself on Fenrir. Her fears, her suspicions…This couldn’t be happening. Maybe this was all a big misunderstanding. It wasn’t that unlikely for thirty-one year olds to start greying, was it? No…she was being stupid now. There was simply no way she could interpret those silver streaks in her hair as anything else.

Did Barret and Tifa notice anything? And if they did, why didn’t they tell her?

She mulled over what he had said to her the other day. Had he noticed the streaks then?

He was right; she needed to hide—not only for her own safety, but for the safety of others, too. At the rate she was degrading, she _was_ going to become the next threat to the dying planet.

_I very much prefer you with silver hair._

She looked around wildly, of all the times he decided to show up—

_No need to do that, Cloud. You can’t see me._

“You’re not…” Pressure was starting to build up in her head. “Go away! Why are you still here?”

_Isn’t it obvious? As long as you are alive, I’ll live on. Pity you don’t understand such basic concepts._

“As long as I’m—no…” _Surely he’s just saying that to screw with me._ “You’re wrong. I’m not going to listen to you.”

She revved up Fenrir’s engine, hoping that the noise would drown him out. Instead, he became louder, closer, like he was whispering into her ear.

_You’ll never get rid of me. We are inextricably linked. Where you end and I begin…That line between us fades more and more the longer you live. It is simply a matter of time. That was obvious from the day you were born._

_Sorry, I should correct myself. That was obvious from the day you were_ made.

The world was slipping away from her. “‘Made’? How could that be—”

_Come with me. I have much to show you…_

Everything went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope things are shaping up to be very interesting…  
> as an aside it’s so hard to gauge whether or not people will like this sort of thing :P


	9. Despondent Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n - argh sorry i’m late again, school’s starting up so :(  
> gonna switch things up this chapter and the next  
> also this one is "choppier" than what i normally do, but it’s mostly because of my screwed up schedule. a return to form will follow with the next chapter.  
> hopefully you’ll enjoy, especially with the switch i’m doing here (and it’s flashback heavy! dunno if that’s a turnoff for some people)

_Rebirth necessitates death._

Cloud was changing for the worse, once again. And Tifa didn’t know if she could do anything this time to save her.

She readjusted herself so that her mattress wasn’t nearly as flat as it was before; Seventh Heaven’s basement wasn’t exactly an ideal place to sleep, though she had to make do with what she still had.

Her head swam with confusion, fear, and misery, and all she wanted in that moment was a television she could use to distract herself with. It wouldn’t solve anything, but it would provide her some temporary—and much needed—relief.

_That’s what you always do. Run away from everything until you can’t run anymore. It’s pretty pathetic, honestly._

She turned over. Her head was starting to hurt.

_You’ve done it ever since you were young. Nothing can hurt if you can’t even be touched. When someone tries to reach out to you, you just recede deeper into yourself…_

She curled into a ball, trying to come up with something to push the voices out.

_You’re doing it right now, aren’t you? Coward. Is it any wonder as to why everyone’s drifting away from you? Is it any wonder as to why she left you all those years ago? She never saw anything in you, and neither did he._

She hurriedly recalled her conversation with Barret earlier in the day.

“I think we should’ve said something,” he had said, scowling the moment Cloud left.

“And scare her?”

“She needs to know. Keeping this sort of problem secret will only make things more painful in the end.”

“No, she doesn’t ‘need’ to know. She needs some peace.”

“Peace at the expense of us! Only the gods know what’s brewing in her head now, and we both know that she's losing her grip on reality. Remember what she told us about him? It’s the exact same situation.”

“No.” She pulled away from the bar, no longer looking at him. “You’re wrong. She isn’t like him. She’s just…in a very bad situation right now.”

“I understand that, but…tell me, where’d those silver streaks in her hair come from? Why’d she develop them in the first place? Don’t get me started on her eyes. Personality-wise? Nothin’ like she was when she wiped Sephiroth from the face of the planet. Something’s clearly up.”

She let out a sigh. “If you’re right, what are we going to do? What’s your solution to all this?”

“I don’t have one. Sorry.”

Just as hopeless as he was when Sephiroth tried to become a god. Everyone back then was incredibly dismal, yet his despair stung her the most. He was the one that would snap everyone back into shape when they got sidetracked, he was the one who reignited passion whenever it died out, he was the one who’d be there to pick everyone up after they faced a defeat or setback. For him to accept this turn of events as something inevitable, after detailing how bad Cloud’s changes were, was…frustrating, to say the least.

 _It’s like everyone’s forgetting themselves,_ she thought to herself. _Everything is falling apart. The world’s going to end again, probably…_

_It’s hopeless. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t…All I can do is lay here and watch…I’m a terrible person. I should do something, but what? I can’t even take action when I want to. Maybe I’ll check on her, to do the bare minimum…She seems to be getting worse and worse with every passing day._

_If she ever turns on us, I don’t think I’ll be able to kill her._

She only got in two knocks before she answered.

“Tifa? What’re you doing here?” she said, somewhat startled and looking as ill as ever. Perhaps even more so now, or maybe she was imagining it to fit her current perception of Cloud—she couldn’t be certain. It was somewhat difficult to see her in full, since she was peering at her through a crack in the door.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing.” Her calm voice belied the pain in her heart.

“I’m fine.” She hid behind the door a little bit, like she was unwilling to show herself in full. “Really. Why are you worried about me?”

She sucked in a breath and took her chance. “Because…because I want to know why your hair’s starting to grey.”

The silence that followed told her everything.

“What’s going on with you?”

Cloud only slinked further away, furrowing her brow in what looked to be guilt.

“You can tell me.”

A pause. She moved even further away from the door.

“No. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.” With that, she shut Tifa out of her sight.

“Wait, Cloud!” She latched onto the door handle and started pulling on it, only to find that it was locked. “Cloud, please! I need to know what's bothering you!”

She jiggled the handle a couple of times before giving up and leaning on the door. “Cloud, goddammit…”

For how long she stood there, she did not know. But eventually—and perhaps to her shock—Cloud returned and opened the door all the way.

“Take a good look, Tifa.”

She was reeling. “Your hair—it’s…”

It had grown out into silvery-white locks that brushed against her shoulder blades. She didn’t have his bangs, but she could see the resemblance. That scared her.

“Why do you think I didn’t want you to see me?”

“I didn’t…I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I should’ve said something about this before.” She sighed. “I’ll see you later after I straighten myself out.”

The door shut once more, leaving Tifa alone with her surge of thoughts and feelings.

She couldn’t believe it. All this time she had written off Cid as some conspiracy nutjob, someone she’d ignore whenever he started talking, but now that she saw what was becoming of Cloud…

It wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve this. She had fought for the planet, for everyone that lived on it, for her late mother, for everyone that perished in Nibelheim, for her friends, and for her…only for her to start transforming into the man that was responsible for everyone’s suffering.

It wasn’t fair.

“So she’s really…damn. What are we gonna do, though, Tifa? Kill her?”

“No! I don’t want to kill her!” she said, suppressing an urge to tear up. “After all we’ve been through? After everything I did for her? I can’t bring myself to do it, and I doubt you could, either. Surely there’s something we can do to help her…”

“I know I keep askin’, but shit! What will we do? Can we do anything at all?”

“I want to think we can. I just don’t know…”

They didn’t speak for a long time after she divulged her concerns.

“I wish that bastard just came back to life instead. Would've made it a lot easier to come up with a plan. We wouldn't be here if Cloud wasn't…” He trailed off to glance away.

“Honestly. Sephiroth would be much easier to deal with than whatever’s going on right now.”

“We’re not dealing with him, though. We’re dealing with Cloud.”

“That’s the problem.”

She didn’t know what compelled her to return to her hometown, though she seldom resisted the urge.

She expected great pain in her heart as the horrible memories came back to her, but instead, all she felt was a dull nothingness. Too numb from everything else to care about this again. Or, perhaps, the pain within her had stayed for so long that it became her emotional dullness, hanging over her in every waking moment like a terminal illness.

No one lived here anymore, and she couldn’t remember when the migration happened. Nature had used its gnarled roots and twisting vines to claim the village, and it wasn’t unusual for entire fronts of houses to be enveloped by parasitic vegetation. Her old home—rather, the replica of her old home, however, was relatively intact, beyond some wear from age and lack of upkeep. Deciding to go in, she started to sift through her thoughts on Cloud’s ordeal, slowly making her way upstairs, toward her room, for some form of rest.

She had an epiphany right then and there as she sat down on “her” bed: Cloud was never normal.

She didn’t understand it back then, of course, but when she looked back at her memories with a newfound comprehension of everything odd regarding her friend…

It all began when Cloud moved into Nibelheim.

The first time she saw her was on the day she arrived, and she looked to be a short, lively kid—and younger than the youngest local. A battered chocobo doll was held tightly to her chest, and her platinum blonde hair was strange, almost wild, like someone in a hurry had cut it. She was bouncing all over the place as her mother (and Tifa wondered what happened to her father…) and the moving men unloaded their belongings into their new house. 

After that day, she didn’t see Cloud for months. There were rumors that her mother was some sort of Shinra spy, researching the area to see if it was ideal for future reactors and laboratories; meanwhile, Cloud was not really her child but rather a random kid they had stolen so as to make the spy less suspicious. And the rumors began to carry weight as time wore on, despite their inherently ridiculous nature. If Cloud wasn’t going outside, that meant Cloud was never supposed to be a permanent resident in the first place.

Her mother occasionally left the home, usually to fulfill an errand or two, and there would always be someone who eventually came up to her to start accusing her of being a Shinra goon. She’d defend herself best she could, but she was going against people who wouldn’t listen. It was too late for her to amend her image, and everyone else had resigned themselves to the idea that she would be antagonized for as long as she lived.

Then, one day, Cloud fell ill.

Tifa and her father were shopping at the local store to prepare for a Midgar trip when her mother came running in through the doors. She seemed as if she hadn’t slept in days, and stray hairs from her blonde ponytail kept sticking to her clammy face. After reaching the counter and panting for air, she quickly said, “Medicine? Do you have any medicine?”

The owner didn’t respond immediately, too stunned to think. “…Medicine? Uh…” He glanced at the shelves behind him. “We’ve got herbs, potions, some Midgarian over-the-counter brands, and, um—”

“Th-that’s not good enough!” She turned around and leaned on her knees, still out of breath. “Oh, gods…what am I gonna do? Cloud’s going to die! I don’t know who I could turn to for help…oh no, oh no, Cloud, sweetie, I’m so sorry…”

A customer came up to her with pity in her dark eyes. “What’s wrong with your child?”

“I don’t know. I’ve tried everything, researched everything, and yet—she’s still…” Something like a choked sob escaped her lips. “She hasn’t woken up in three weeks.”

That got everyone’s attention, including her father’s.

“Is she—”

“No, she’s still breathing. I don’t know…I don’t know if she’ll ever wake up. I’ve had doctors of all kinds come and they’re no help. What she has…has never been seen before. If professionals can’t help her, then—how am I supposed to?”

She gave in to her tears, sinking to the floor as she wept. Tifa stared at her while some of the adults came to her side to see if they could help out in any way. _She’s gonna sleep forever?_ She started tugging on her father’s coat.

“What is it?” he said in a low voice, likely because he didn’t want to divert attention from Cloud’s mother.

“Dad…is she gonna…die?”

“I don’t know, Tifa.”

She felt even more afraid than before.

Cloud came back. She was playing by herself in her backyard. Her chocobo doll was her only companion. Tifa watched her for a long time, finally acting on her curiosity when it overwhelmed her. She needed to know how she survived.

Her first words to her were very blunt, and a little incorrect. “What was it like being dead for so long?”

Cloud looked up at her, her expression blank, her turquoise eyes piercing Tifa’s being. “Dark and cold.” She fiddled with the doll’s wings. “But it wasn't always bad. Sometimes my mom was there, and she’d sing to me and show me pretty places.”

“Wait…your mom was there? How?”

“Dunno. She looked different, too. She had red eyes and long white hair. But she was just as nice as she normally is.”

“I don’t think that was your mom. ‘Cause I met her, too.”

“Huh?”

She stamped her foot, as if that would lend more credence to her words. “It’s true! I spoke to her and everything!”

“That means she’s not my mom, though…” Cloud sounded oddly disappointed.

“Who is she, actually? I don’t think she lives here.”

“Beats me. Maybe she’s just a homeless weirdo.”

“I guess. But anyway…I wanted to ask you…How did you wake up?”

“Dunno. That lady came on the day I woke up and said it was time to live or somethin’—that’s when it happened. It was weird and I didn’t really understand it. I still don’t.”

“Huh…” Tifa glanced at her doll and got an idea. “Is that the only toy you got?”

She didn’t say anything, though the blush on her cheeks was all she needed to know.

“I got more at home. You wanna go see ‘em?”

“Sure!”

_Now that I’m looking back…what a weird start to a friendship…_

They were older now, and tonight was the fateful night where Cloud both told her about her deepest desire and her darkest secret.

Their conversation had started out innocently enough.

“I’m gonna make a name for myself. I’m not gonna be some village idiot in the middle of nowhere anymore. SOLDIER is where I belong.” Cloud eyed her carefully for any changes in her blank stare, stopping when some sort of surprise rose up on her face. “That’s right. I’m gonna be one of them!”

“You want to join SOLDIER?” Tifa remembered herself saying. “All the kids are doing that nowadays…”

Cloud took on an arrogant expression. “Yeah, and I’m gonna be better than everyone else. I’m gonna be just as good as Sephiroth. I know it.”

They glanced at each other, and for a moment it looked like Cloud was suddenly having second thoughts about what she said.

“If you insist. But I’ve heard it’s very hard to get in. A thousand apply, and ten qualify. That’s not even mentioning the different ranks of SOLDIER and the requirements for the higher ranks…”

“I know about that sorta stuff. I’m not worried. My mom is, though,” she said, looking away. “She really doesn’t want me to do it.”

“Did she tell you why?”

Cloud nodded, while her lips curled down into a pout. Her bright blue eyes were still downcast. “The thing is…I don’t know if I believe the reason why. She told me it’s because they’re not just judging someone’s physical abilities—they’re judging your mind and your body, too. I said I already knew that, and she _then_ says that they do a bunch of experiments on you to see if you’re worthy enough. That…can’t be true, can it?”

“If it is, why would she know something like that?”

“I dunno. It kinda scares me. It’s like how I don’t know what my mom did before she had me.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. A lot of her past is a big mystery.”

They sat in silence for a long time, taking a great interest in the ground below them.

“Cloud…” A chill descended upon her as she broke the stillness. “Your mom… Did she work for Shinra?”

“No way! Where’d you get that idea?”

“I just can’t help but wonder…Either way, she’s probably worried about your health. Those tests they put you through could easily kill you if you’re not careful.”

“I’ve thought about that, and why my health’s always been pretty bad.” The stars reflected in her eyes were quivering, and her irises shone much more than they should have. Her voice grew weak. “Tifa, do you think…do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

The question left her stupefied. She should’ve answered right away, and yet…she did not.

“Well, do you? Am I a freak?”

“No, no, of course not!”

“Then why are you the only one who bothers to talk to me at all? Why does everyone else think of me as a monster?”

“But you’re not a monster—”

“That’s not what everyone says to me! To them I’m just some disgusting creature, or I’m a mistake, or that I…that I don’t deserve to…” Cloud lost it, reverting to the fetal position, her strangled cries sounding as though she was failing to suppress them. “I hate it! I hate everyone and everything!”

Tifa slid closer, holding onto her as she gripped her own head.

“I don’t understand,” she said in between chokes. “Why do people have to be so horrible to each other?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Just ‘cause I lived in a lab for little while doesn’t mean—”

“You _lived_ in a _lab_?”

Cloud stopped tearing up momentarily, turning as pale as the moon above them. With a scowl, she said, “Forget about what I just said, please. I don’t want to be humiliated any further.”

“Er…okay…”

They grew quiet again for a few minutes; Tifa took it as her chance to ask Cloud _the_ question.

“Cloud…I want you to promise me something.”

Their eyes locked onto each other.

“What is it?”

The rest was history.

Another memory—this one was much further into the future. This time, she was on the Highwind’s deck, watching the world below her roll on by, blending into a mess of dull greens and greys every time Cid kicked the airship into high gear. Everyone else was inside with him until he started to return to Rocket Town. Vincent, of all people, was the one who left him to join her.

She couldn’t resist a subtle dig at him when he was in earshot. “You’re not one to enjoy the scenery.”

“I am not. There was something I wanted to ask you…”

“Oh?”

“It is about your friend, Cloud. And what you had said about that accursed Black Materia.”

“Oh…” Her chest tightened after her heart ceased its beating. “I still say she’s not his lackey, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“She is certainly not his servant. However, did you not admit earlier that she is one of his clones? By that circumstance, she must be capable of shapeshifting like the others.”

“Shape—shapeshifting?”

“Indeed. We have seen what became of the other clones. They either transformed into variations of Jenova, or assumed the form of their master to carry out his plans. When she gave him the Black Materia, however…You said her hair changed color, as did her eyes, but nothing beyond that, correct?”

She nodded, not liking where he was going.

“That suggests she _could_ have changed even more. Something was preventing her from morphing into his duplicate.”

She was both surprised and relieved he wasn’t going down the same route Cid did. “So…do you have any idea of what that something could’ve been?”

“Cloud has a will. That is what spares her from being a ‘proper’ clone. If she loses that, and begins to forget herself once more…” Vincent shook his head and turned away from her. “May the powers that be have mercy on all of your souls.”

Now she was back in Seventh Heaven…Barret and Marlene weren’t there, although there was someone else with her—a Turk. In the depths of her mind she recognized that she was getting closer to the present; this memory was only five years old.

“Is Cloud still alive?” Her shrill voice came in first. Tifa had been mindlessly scrubbing down a shot glass when she heard the door open. She couldn’t see her, as her back was turned to her, though she recognized the speaker immediately.

“Elena?” she said, refusing to move. “Why do you care about her?”

She scoffed. “It’s not me who’s worried about that blonde. I’m here on behalf of the president. He wants to know her condition.”

“Why does _he_ care about her?”

There was a pause, and Elena started to fumble with her words. “Mr. Shinra cares because he wants to use her to…fix the world? Er…He says ‘she’s the final piece of the puzzle’.”

“What do you mean by that? Are you saying she’s going to be sacrificed to something—is she going to be murdered?”

“Can’t answer that. All I know is that I’m satiating his whims.”

“And I’m inclined to believe a word you’re saying because…?”

“I don’t have a reason to lie. I know you hate us, but I’m telling the truth.”

She faced her. Elena wasn’t bandaged up like she would be five years later (and Tifa had to wonder if the present Rufus’ geostigma was spreading to the Turks), which slightly disoriented her.

“Answer me this, Elena,” she started. “Are you thinking of doing something to Cloud at this moment?”

Her coolness lapsed into genuine shock. “What? No. He still doesn’t know how to use her. So you’ve got some time. I say you cherish that time with her before it’s too late.”

_I suppose it’s too late now…_

She shouldn’t have woken up. That meant she had fallen asleep—how long did she sleep for? She sat up quickly, panic sinking within her. Something terrible might’ve happened while she slept. Were Barret and Marlene okay? Cloud, too…

As she got to her feet, she realized she wasn’t in her old house anymore. She was in the reactor, right in front of the red door where Sephiroth reunited with his “mother”.

_Wait—how did I get here? What was I doing before I got up?_

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

Hairs on the nape of her neck shot up. How’d he know about her whereabouts?

“Barret? How did you…”

“You were gone for a couple of days. Cloud came by earlier today and we both knew that you like to visit your old place sometimes. Took my chance, and, well, here I am. Marlene’s with Elmyra, by the way—since I know you were gonna be worried about her. But Tifa, please tell me—why in the gods’ names are you sitting in the damn _reactor_?”

“To tell you the truth,” she said, then swallowed, ignoring how dry her throat was. “I have no memory of entering this place.”

As she said that, something unmistakable began to stir within her; like the sensation that she wasn’t wearing her own skin began to slither up her body. Something that she had been denying for as long as she could, but now, she could ignore it no longer.

 _There’s something wrong with_ me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n - i hope you’re enjoying where this is going…a lot of what’s detailed here carry some grave implications for everyone involved, so…that will be fun when things come to fruition :)


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